A Look Back On One Crazy Year Of Link Building

If 2012 was the year of Google Algorithm updates — Moz counted 37 big ones compared to the 15 in 2013 and 21 in 2011 — 2013 was the year that link building suffered from a serious identity crisis.
It was sidelined, stretched, swindled and spit back out again more times than your average SEO pitches a guest blog post; but somehow it survived, and it will slide into 2014 broken, beaten and a little bloody. Let’s look back on everything that went down in link building in 2013.

Link Building Died

Some say it died; some cry blasphemy at that statement — but whatever side of the fence you’re standing on, you can’t argue that the link building of 2013 was anything like the link building of 2011 and even 2012. Google got smarter, users savvier and the algorithm harder to game.

The traditional “10 blue links” SERP is rarely spotted anymore; instead, it is cluttered with Google Shopping, image results, map listings or news results… or sometimes a mix of all of them. That invariably made link building harder because you didn’t know what you were building for.

It Was Resurrected By “Content Marketing”

2013 was the year that people started replacing “link building” with “content marketing.” For a little bit there, it seemed to be working; and, from looking at Google Trends, that could still keep happening in 2014.

I love content marketing. I love link building. I love it even more when they work together, but that doesn’t mean I can use the terms interchangeably.

Content marketing is creating content that’s specific to each subset of your users and giving it to them at the time they’re ready to absorb it. Link building is doing something to get more links to a page. You can do that with content, but you can do it with a dozen other tactics, too.

It Was Briefly Renamed Link Earning

Where link building implies taking an aggressive, active action in order to get one link, link earning is purely organic. You create something that deserves to be linked to, not something you have to convince someone to link to.

“You want my link? You better damn well work for it,” bloggers started to say.

To me, changing link building to link earning makes a lot of sense because it’s a better description of what we do. We’re not “building” anything, as that implies there will be something at the end of it to show for our work (when we all know that’s not always the case). Even one-to-one actions like resource listings or broken link building still require you to have something worthy of being linked to.

Public Relations & Media Outreach Were Weaved In

Every aspect of link building requires some sort of outreach, regardless if it’s to bloggers, journalists, webmasters or experts. The best link builders are the ones who know how to create an instant connection with someone in just a four-sentence email.

When bloggers stopped putting up with the guest blogging onslaughter, link building moved to attracting traditional news outlets for mentions (and links). That required you to get savvier in how you pitch them. Yes, journalists crave content, but they’re also sticklers for it being news-worthy and attention grabbing.

And It Claimed More Tactics As Link Schemes

I think we all breathed a little sigh of “well duh” when Google finally added guest posting, press releases and advertorials with over-optimized anchor text to their link schemes. Still, it shook a lot people simply because of the vagueness of Google’s language. Even if you were doing the right thing, Google could just decide that you “intended to manipulate PageRank.”

Guest blogging will continue to exist in 2014, but it won’t be a viable, scalable or efficient tactic. Spending two hours writing and five hours sourcing with the hope that someone, anyone will post your article is time wasted that your competitors are taking advantage of.

In spite of all these changes, link building isn’t going anywhere. It can’t — Google relies on links for rankings. They’re the word-of-mouth endorsement for search engines. It’s not like they can take verbal endorsements and just know what to rank. Sorry, Google. You’re good, but you’re not that good.

What do you think was the biggest change link building faced in 2013? Where will it take is in 2014? Tell me in the comments below.

Redefining "Advertising": How 2013 Transformed Digital Marketing

It was a great year for digital advertising. New technologies took off, helping brands, agencies and publishers reach today’s constantly connected consumers more easily and effectively than ever before. With budgets no longer being siloed, 20% of organizations incorporated digital into each marketing function, per a study by Adobe.

We compiled a few of the bigger changes in marketing and digital advertising in 2013, to see how far the industry has come along.

Redefining “creative”
New creative formats took center stage in 2013. Marketers invested more in social media and TrueView skippable video ad formats continued to grow on the DoubleClick Ad Exchange.

Redefining “integrated”
The new 360 media plan cannot overlook digital and the sheer number of screens people interact with. In 2012, Google released some research indicating that people use 3 screen combinations a day. In 2013, this manifested itself in the form of increased investments in multi-screen campaigns.

Redefining “buying”
New(Up)fronts. Programmatic. 2013 changed the way digital media spend is committed.18 digital media companies presented at the Digital Content NewFronts. And programmatic buying gained significant traction with an expected ~74% growth, according to eMarketer. As brands took to programmatic and with the growth of programmatic video, CPMs on the DoubleClick Ad Exchange increased, and Preferred Deal impressions grew 250%. DoubleClick Bid Manager powered social media ads, joined FBX.

Redefining “success”
Earlier this year, AdAge released some research indicating that 50% of display ads are not viewed, making advertising viewability a hot industry topic. Google’s viewability measurement solution, ActiveView, got MRC-accredited. Last week, Google announced that it would enable viewability-based buys on the Google Display Network. Engagement Rate was another hot metric in 2013, with Cost per Engagement pay models enabled for ad formats like Engagement Ads on the Google Display Network.

Default Campaign Settings In AdWords — The Good, The Bad & The Ugly

Fellow SEM experts, how many times has this happened to you? A newbie joins your company (or a company with which your SEM agency is working) and is convinced that he is an SEM master. He’s read a few SEM books, attended a conference or two, and gone through the AdWords tutorials, after all. It’s just keywords and text ads!

In a worst-case scenario, this genius has enough confidence to convince folks higher up in the organization that he can truly make positive improvements to the path of the company’s SEM fortunes and suddenly has some control over the campaigns. My favorite example of this scenario happened last year when a self-proclaimed “searchologist” did a re-org of a B2B AdWords campaign that resulted in an 85% conversion rate — a nice increase over the 3% conversion rate the campaigns had seen for the prior three years.

When I pointed out that this was likely due to a misplaced conversion pixel on the landing page and that this 85% “conversion rate” was more likely indicative of a 15% bounce rate, the searchologist shot back saying that it was the new account structure that was driving these incredible results. As with many things in life, SEM is easy to do, but hard to do well. This axiom is proven to me every day by neophytes who have anointed themselves searchologists, as in the case above.

To demonstrate how dangerous it is to start an AdWords campaign without a lot of deep knowledge, I recently set up a new AdWords campaign and looked at the default settings that AdWords recommends. As you’ll see in the following deep-dive, starting a campaign on AdWords recommended settings can easily lead you to a world of hurt.

Search & Display Or Search & Destroy?

The default campaign type when starting a new AdWords campaign is “Search Network with Display Select,” and the default setting is “standard” versus “all features.” Sticking with the default setting of “standard” here can cause advertisers to miss out on all sorts of opportunities to fine-tune their PPC campaigns, as you’ll see throughout this column.

Display Select is a recent addition to the AdWords world; it pushes your text ads onto parts of the Google Display Network (GDN). GDN can be a very powerful network if managed properly — we have many clients that see 30-40% of their acquisitions coming from GDN — but it can also be a cesspool of irrelevant and occasionally fraudulent sites. (Example: I recently evaluated a B2B telephony site that was spending thousands of dollars a month on a website that had articles about getting cat urine out of carpets!)
Moreover, we’ve found that the conversion rate on banner ads on GDN is astronomically higher than the conversion rate of text ads, so this “display select” offering (which involves text ads only) is a double-whammy for newbie AdWords users.

Devices: All For One, One For All

Regardless of whether you choose “standard” or “all features,” you are defaulted into all devices when you set up your campaign:

Of course, since the advent of Enhanced Campaigns, we are all defaulted into all devices. What’s missing here is the ability to exclude mobile devices by bidding at -100%. Assuming that new AdWords advertisers are the least likely to have mobile-optimized sites, running full-throttle on mobile is likely going to be pretty painful.

Location: Pakistanis Searching For “Los Angeles Burger King”

The next option is location targeting. The default setting (for US customers) goes to US and Canada, which makes sense to me. The advanced options (which I have highlighted in yellow in the screenshot) are missing for “standard” users:

I’ve found a surprisingly large variance in performance between “people in my targeted location” and “people searching for or viewing pages about my targeted location.” In general, folks outside the US perform much more poorly than people in the US (due to shipping costs or the local nature of a product or service). I generally recommend that you exclude these “geo intent” keywords unless you have data that suggest otherwise.

Extensions: PLAs MIA

Ad extension options are unchecked by default in the “standard” edition; they also exclude several more advanced options (yellow represents the excluded options):

Again, in the spirit of simplicity, I totally understand why Google has unchecked these and excluded some choices. That said, an advertiser that at a minimum doesn’t have sitelinks is going to be at a huge disadvantage for competitive terms, especially now that Google has tweaked its algorithm to factor ad extensions into ranking.
Additionally, for e-commerce businesses, not even showing product listing ads (PLAs) as an option is a pretty big deal. For many merchants, PLAs perform better than text ads, and Google appears to be giving PLAs more and more prominence.

Day Parting: All AdWords, All The Time

“Standard” setting users are not shown day-parting options, whereas the “all features” users at least get the ability to click and open a section on day-parting:

Depending on the business, day-parting can be very important. For example, brick-and-mortar businesses that do not have online storefronts are usually better off shutting off ads when their store is closed. B2B companies see conversion rates drop over the weekends.
Moreover, the options shown above aren’t even the most advanced choices — power users can also make bid adjustments by time of day, as opposed to just on/off functionality.

Ad Rotation: CTR FTW!

“Standard” users don’t get to choose ad rotation preferences. “All features” users can open up a hidden field to make their choice, although the “recommended” and default choice is to optimize for CTR:

My preference is to optimize for a combination of CTR and conversion rate, but given that this isn’t a choice, I’d rather chose to optimization for conversion rate.

Keyword Matching: Close Only Counts In Horseshoes & Hand Grenades

The last “all features”-only option allows advertisers to opt-out of exact and phrase near-match:

I haven’t seen a huge impact one way or the other from this feature, but when in doubt, I prefer to have more control over my keywords, so I opt out.

The Average Man Thinks He Isn’t

As I’ve said numerous times in this article, I don’t fault Google for making choices in the name of simplicity. Amongst self-serve online advertising platforms, Google has the best training and FAQs and the easiest-to-use interface. All that being said, the things that are missing from the default campaign settings in AdWords are the nuances that often make or break an account.
And, this ultimately goes back to my original point: people who think they know AdWords but actually don’t will get burned badly by simply following AdWords’ recommended settings. If you think an expert is expensive, wait until you see what a novice will cost you!

Just in time for the holidays — viewability across the Google Display Network

Even the jingliest, jolliest ad of the season can’t work its magic unless it gets seen. That has been the driving force behind a number of investments we’ve been making over the past year to make viewability (or whether an ad is actually visible on a page) a core part of our products. Offering improved insights, transparency and actionability, viewability is key for brand advertisers to get the most out of the web.

Today, Google taking an important step towards this goal by making it possible to buy based on viewability — in real time — across the more than two million sites in the Google Display Network. Viewability was already available for reservations buys on the Google Display Network, now this solution is available in the auction on a CPM basis globally as well, across desktop, mobile and tablet.  In other words, you can now choose to pay for ONLY those impressions where your ad has a chance to be seen.

This new buying option is based on Active View, our MRC-accredited viewability measurement solution. Through an algorithmic review of publisher sites, our systems will show ads only in ad slots most likely to be viewable, and you only pay for the ones measured as viewable according to the IAB/3MS standard: 50% of the ad visible on the page for one second or longer. You will also see a report of how many viewable impressions you received for any given campaign, which can help make future campaigns even more effective.

As Google said, making viewability a basis for buying, selling and measuring media can help transform the digital marketplace. With access to more meaningful metrics, brand advertisers can unleash their most creative campaigns, knowing they’ll have a chance to shine. And publishers will be able to more fairly value all of their inventory, not just those spots considered “above-the-fold.”

SEO Changed Forever In 2013. How To Adjust And Thrive In 2014

If there’s ever been any question that SEO marketers need to put user needs first, 2013 was the year the search engines made it clear.

Nearly every innovation in search — algorithm updates like Google Hummingbird, SERP enhancements, social integrations — was aimed at creating a better experience for the searcher.


These innovations require SEO marketers to think more closely about the value their content creates for users and to take the technical steps that communicate that value to the search engines. Additionally, with an increasing shift toward mobile, it’s even more important that searchers can quickly find what they are looking for.

Google is leading the way in putting more information on the SERP, better organizing results, and adapting to spoken language. At the same time, Bing has been making innovations in its ability to provide accurate results to users, give more information to webmasters, and optimize for the Windows 8.1 environment.
Here are the key innovations in search for 2013 and how to stay ahead of the game as an SEO marketer.

Google Algorithm Updates Promote Better Content

Below is a review of the ways Panda, Penguin and Hummingbird affect SEO and what you can do for better performance.

Panda And Penguin: Fighting Spam For The Greater Good
After 25 tracked encounters with the content-spam-fighting Panda, Google said in March that it would no longer announce Panda updates. Then in May, Google announced the Panda Dance: monthly updates rolled out over a 10-day period. With unannounced updates, it’s harder to tell if you’ve been affected by Panda. Low quality content is no longer worth the trouble, even for short-term gain.

The 4th and 5th rounds of the Penguin update took its penalization of linking schemes deeper into the site, addressing more types of links. With Penguin, Google is saying the same thing for links as it is for content: they need to have value, a reason to exist other than to inflate rankings.

Google’s ever-broadening definition of spam is beneficial not only for searchers looking for information; it’s beneficial for SEO marketers focused on white-hat tactics and quality content, since it means their sites will rank higher as more spam gets filtered out.

Hummingbird: Semantic Search For The Masses

The rise in mobile, the increasing use of voice search, and the arrival of a new generation of young searchers untrained to search in keywords (partly due to the proliferation of tablets) could be some of the factors leading to Google’s most significant algorithm upgrade to date.

While most SEO marketers didn’t see an impact from the Hummingbird updates that were rolled out over a month before the late September announcement, Google’s new ability to effectively address conversational queries and match content based on synonyms further solidified the audience-centric content imperative. Danny Sullivan reported that there’s nothing SEOs need to do differently for Hummingbird: just continue focusing on high-quality content.

Creating high-quality content that meets user needs and optimizing it as you go makes SEO a more integral part of a holistic marketing process. To ensure your site doesn’t get hit by a black and white beast or a tiny bird in search of nectar, try these tactics:

• Think about topics rather than keywords when considering content creation. What questions does the page answer? Are there synonyms for the topic that can be used on the page?
• Seek out high-quality partners for linking. Make sure the link is placed in a context that is congruent with the topic.
• Try to get bad links to your site removed. If that’s not possible, use the Google links disavow tool.
• Hire qualified, capable partners for both writing and SEO. Just because someone is good at SEO doesn’t mean they can write copy that is clear and compelling, and most writers aren’t trained to do SEO. Ideally, content can be optimized as it’s being created from within the CMS.

Foster a teamwork culture for content strategy. Conceptualizing, writing, and placing quality content on Web pages that drive revenue is a team effort.

The SERP Of The Future Is Here: Knowledge Graph

The Knowledge Graph, launched in 2012, takes advantage of the Schema.org alliance formed in 2011 and represents a fundamental shift in how searchers get information. The structured data delivered in results often answers searchers’ questions directly on the SERP or offers them opportunities to better filter the results based on their preferences.

In 2013, Google expanded the scope of Knowledge Graph results, which usually appear on the SERP as an informational box on the right, information below the search box, or a horizontal carousel of results at the top of the SERP.

The outcome is the myriad ways results are now displayed. The Knowledge Graph benefits searchers by allowing them to see the value of a website before they click, or by providing them with the information they need without having to click at all.

The local carousel results with images, reviews, and a map provide a richer experience than the previous local-listings pack. In early October, BrightEdge research showed that a carousel appeared on results for 14% of keywords across all industries. It appeared on 33% of searches in Travel and Hospitality, and 27% of searches in the restaurant category. Research has also shown that Google reviews have an impact on placement in the carousel.

Since the future SERP is already here, the time to start engaging these capabilities is now. Below are two keys to making sure your site appears in Knowledge Graph results.

• Implement structured data and rich snippets. Structured data allows Google to organize the information on your website and deliver it in rich snippets that help you stand out from the competition
• Claim your Google+ and Google Places for Business pages. This gives you greater control over what the search engine reads and displays to users, such as images, hours, current menus, rates and promotions.

Social Signals Matter

The year started off with the release of Facebook Graph Search, which delivers personalized results based on social connections. This personal application for big data blends social, local, content, and business information into search results and offers another opportunity for marketers to engage with their customers.
With the release of Hummingbird, it’s expected that social signals will have more of an impact on Google rankings. It’s already been shown that increasing engagement on Twitter can increase search rankings, and Google Plus profiles and pages have an impact on ranking as well.

Authorship (with the rel=author tag) was introduced in 2011, and late this past summer both Facebook and Google announced author attribution with embedded posts.

Google Plus, whether it’s for personal or business use, is an important source of structured data that Google can easily embed in search results, and it should not be ignored. Social is part of SEO, not separate from it, and the best marketing programs will promote a synergy between search and social for a holistic content strategy. Below are some additional tips for getting the most out of social.

• Participate in Google Plus, Facebook, and Twitter, whether you’re a business or an individual. Here, I offer some specific suggestions for getting the most out of Facebook Graph search.
• If you’re a business, don’t forget about LinkedIn. 

The New Direction In SEO: Page-Centric Search

Perhaps the biggest shakeup of the year was Google’s move to 100% secure search in late September. Though most SEOs had been watching the steadily rising percentages next to Keyword (not provided) in their analytics reports, no one expected it to come so soon. Yet, the most forward-thinking marketers were prepared; they had already shifted to page-centric analytics. We actually anticipated the move towards 100% secure search early on and closely tracked its evolution.

The switch to secure search concurrent with the announcement of Hummingbird is no coincidence. Hummingbird asks marketers to think more about the meaning of words on the page, and to create content around topics rather than keywords. After being trained by Panda’s systematic penalizing of low-quality content, marketers are now shown another doorway to quality in the direction Google sees search heading.

Voice queries, question-based queries, and a greater emphasis on the meanings of words rather than the keyword itself — combined with information from rich snippets and social signals — mean Google can do a better job of helping searchers decide which link will provide the information they seek.

With secure search, Google Webmaster Tools takes on new importance as it’s now the only source of keyword data from Google. While exact metrics on keyword traffic to the page are no longer available, integrating keyword impression and click data from Google Webmaster Tools with page-level performance offers a powerful tool for deciding which pages to focus on improving — based not only on their performance, but their potential.

Below are some additional actions to take in the face of secure search that will serve to solidify SEO best practices as you move your analytics focus to the page level.

• Understand your audience. Research who they are, what they are looking for in relation to your company and how they go about getting information. Personas are a great way to bring your audience to life and think about them beyond clicks and revenue.
• Optimize for multiple keywords. I mentioned synonyms above. Users are smart enough to know there’s more than one way to say the same thing, so a little variety in the words on your copy won’t turn them away and could help you rank better.
• Analyze the competitive landscape. Looking at who else ranks for your keywords can give you clues into what users are really looking for. Share of Voice tools help by giving you information about your competitors and showing you all the keywords their pages are ranking for.

Mobile Reaches The Majority

What comScore calls the “multi-platform majority” is now here: as of April 2013, more than half of US Internet users accessed the Web through both a mobile and a desktop device.

Our own MobileShare report tells us that mobile traffic growth is outgrowing desktop traffic growth. In June, Google announced that mobile-friendly sites would be favored in the rankings, and this year it also published guidelines for creating mobile-friendly websites. Google wants searchers to be able to find the information they need on whatever device they happen to be using.

According to a Google study, 81 percent of mobile searches are driven by speed and convenience, and are likely to encourage follow up actions, whether it’s making a purchase, sharing information, or visiting a location. The shift to mobile means that marketers must also consider the needs of the mobile searcher in their content strategy.

• Consider content relevancy. Mobile users want information quickly, at the top of a page. Consider how your pages can deliver information up front.
• Drive transactions. Because mobile users often want something in the moment, consider how you can drive a transaction immediately or facilitate an interaction later, such as emailing a link, sharing on Facebook, or saving to an account.

Bing Innovations

It’s easy to forget that Google accounts for only about two-thirds of search volume, and Bing and Yahoo account for most of the remaining third. The pair have been holding steady in search share: in September 2013, they collectively accounted for 29.3 percent of search share, according to comScore, up one point from 28.1 percent in September 2012.

The release of Windows 8 in late 2012 and the adoption of the new Windows mobile devices could help Bing increase its market share, especially after the coming holiday season. The new Bing Smart Search for Windows 8.1 was designed for a touch screen environment, integrating different forms of structured data, maps, video, social results. Bing is also strengthening its voice query capabilities, now in testing on Xbox One.
In support of Smart Search, Bing Webmaster Tools released a Smart Search Preview tool. Bing also strengthened its social offering by adding Connected Pages to its Webmaster Tools, which allows website owners to view keyword referral data to social pages like Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. And of course, Bing is currently the best source of keyword referral data now that Google operates in a secure environment. It’s important to account for Bing’s innovations and search volume in your overall SEO program:

• Note any differences in page performance. Click-throughs, conversions and revenue might vary from Google; thus, improving performance on Bing can boost revenue.
• Analyze the competition. Note differences in the competitive set in Share of Voice analyses, and research competitors that might not show up on Google.
• Use the Connected Pages feature to add your social pages to Bing. Track performance of social on Bing and use findings to inform future social campaigns.

Conclusion

Many brands saw these search transformations coming. At the end of last year, we reached out to thousands of marketers to find out what they sought to improve upon in 2013. We found that a whopping majority — 75 percent — highlighted that taking a page-based approach (as opposed to just a keyword-driven approach) is going to be an important factor in their SEO strategy. This year’s outstanding innovations by Facebook, Google, and Bing indicate that marketers were right on track with their intentions.

The search engines are working hard to deliver the best results to users, and marketers must work equally hard to get the right information in front of users in order to encourage them to convert. SEOs with technical and strategic know-how working together in a team environment to create an audience-centric content strategy will be the ones that stay ahead of the game in 2014.

3 Ways to Measure More Conversions Using Estimated Total Conversions

In October, Google announced Estimated Total Conversions as a first step to providing you with a more holistic view of the conversions driven by AdWords. It is available to all advertisers who use AdWords conversion tracking. Estimated Total Conversions includes conversions you see today, such as online sales, as well as new conversion types like cross-device conversions and calls.

These insights are particularly important to understand because consumers are now constantly connected, using multiple devices throughout the day. In the next few weeks, this will be even more pronounced as people shop for holiday gifts. A recent holiday study shows that 84% of consumers who are likely to use a mobile or tablet device while shopping this holiday season, will start shopping on one device and finish on another.

Google making it easier for advertisers to understand these consumer behaviors with new insights that are part of Estimated Total Conversions, a new column in AdWords.

Estimated Total Conversions includes cross-device conversions, which are also shown in a separate column to highlight their importance.

3 ways to use Estimated Total Conversions to improve business results

1. Take another look at your desktop/tablet bid. Once you see more conversions that can be attributed to AdWords, your total ROI from AdWords will change. Re-calculate your desktop/tablet cost-per-acquisition (CPA) based on these cross-device conversions. If your CPA has improved using this measure, you might want to look for opportunities where you may be able to increase position and volume by increasing your bids.

2. Capture the full value of mobile.  Many experienced search marketers are already using this data to make business decisions, by starting a test on campaigns that previously did not show on mobile.  Within a few weeks of showing ads on mobile devices, these advertisers started to see conversions they could not before -- those that started on a mobile phone and ended on another device. These insights led to important business decisions like adjusting mobile bids or shifting budget to reflect the new ROI of their keywords.

Amber Yeray, Digital Marketing Manager at EXPRESS, a national fashion retailer, has been working with her agency partner, RKG, to understand the new insights offered by Estimated Total Conversions.

“Cross-device conversions have shown that total estimated conversions are up 7%, with a 17% lift from mobile-initiated conversions. EXPRESS and search marketing agency partner, RKG, are now able to increase mobile bids for areas of the account that show the most impact from mobile -- driving more volume while remaining efficient.”

3. Spend only the most profitable dollar. The total value of your AdWords investment might change once you’re able to see more conversions. Whether it’s AdWords, other digital channels or offline media, think about investing your dollar into the most profitable channel possible.

Estimated Total Conversions provides new insights that may help you optimize bids and budgets to improve performance. Amit Shah, Vice President of Online, Mobile & Social at 1-800-Flowers, used the new insights that he gained to make more informed budget allocation decisions.

“After measuring cross-device conversions that began on a mobile device, we saw a 4% increase in total conversions measured in AdWords. With the full view offered by Estimated Total Conversions, we can correctly understand attribution across channels and make better decisions on achieving marginal spend optimization.”

These are just a few of the tips that we will continue to share as we hear feedback from you

Understanding Impact with Earned Actions in AdWords for video

For many video advertisers, the benefit of TrueView only begins with the first view. Just as an Honest Trailers link pinged to a friend can lead to several other video views, we see this viewership pattern with paid ad views as well – the initial view can catalyze a long chain of engagement with a brand.

Since these earned views are a major benefit of advertising on YouTube and the Google Display Network, we’re bringing new capabilities to AdWords for video to help you better measure viewer actions following your video ads. Formerly known as Follow-on Actions, these new reporting columns will show your Earned views, Earned view rate, Earned subscribers, Earned playlist additions, Earned likes and Earned shares, with additional columns rolling out over the next few weeks. So if you're an advertiser, you can see how many people stayed on your channel to watch more videos, subscribed to your channel, added your video to a playlist, or shared your video with a friend after watching a TrueView ad.

From looking at the last six months, we’ve seen over 6,000 campaigns generate at least one earned view as a result of every two paid views. And we know the YouTube audience isn’t shy about sharing brand content: 3 in 4 YouTube users agree “If there is a brand I love, I tend to tell everyone about it.” (Source: YouTube Insights Oct 2013)

Check out this video to see how Earned Action reporting helps you better understand the impact of your video advertising:


<iframe width="640" height="360" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/DLUzJR35su0?feature=player_embedded" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

  Google have also simplified the Account Linking flow to make it easier to join an AdWords for video account with a YouTube channel and see the effect of TrueView advertising on growing your audience, through Earned subscribers and Earned shares.

Paid Search Spend Surges 27%, Mobile Grabs 40% Thanksgiving, Black Friday Spend

Amid reports that brick and mortar sales were lackluster over the Thanksgiving weekend, ecommerce is looking like a bright spot this holiday season, with mobile devices playing an increasingly important role.
Mercent, which powers major retailer campaigns online for brands including Brookstone, Office Depot and HSN reports same seller online sales increased 40 percent on Thanksgiving Day compared to 2012. Black Friday same seller sales hit a record high, increasing 35 percent

Paid search saw big increases in click volume and retailer spend. Retailers spent 27 percent more on paid search campaigns this Thanksgiving and Black Friday than in 2012, according to a new report from Kenshoo. Thanksgiving saw a 33 percent increase in paid search spend year-over-year, and Black Friday spend rose 21 percent from 2012.

“Kenshoo saw dramatic increases in paid search ad spend and online sales revenue on these two days signifying the peak shopping season is off to a hot start. With the 2013 calendar condensing the time between Thanksgiving and Christmas, we expect the torrid pace to continue,” said Aaron Goldman, Kenshoo CMO.
Smartphone and tablet activity grabbed significant spend share this season. Spending on Computers fell 24.1 percent from last year to 60.3 percent for Thanksgiving and Black Friday. Smartphone budgets shot up 79.1 percent to 21.2 percent of total paid search spend. Tablets saw search spend share skyrocket 113.6 percent to 18.5 percent of total search spend.

“It’s clear that the story of the shopping season to date is the mobile migration,” added Goldman. “In fact, this isn’t just a migration we’re seeing, it’s a full on revolution. With phones and tablets accounting for nearly 40% of all paid search ad spend on Thanksgiving and Black Friday, it’s clear marketers have multi-device strategies in place to lure consumers wherever and whenever they’re shopping.”

Mobile devices accounted for 44.2 percent of all paid search clicks in 2013, with 27 percent going to phones and 17.2 percent of clicks going to tablets. That’s up from just 27.7 percent of paid search clicks in all of November 2012, and 14.5 percent during the 2011 holiday shopping season.

Computers still dominate paid search revenue, though even that hold is slipping. Computer revenue share fell from 90.4 percent in November 2012 to 73.2 percent on Thanksgiving and Black Friday this year. The share of revenue coming through mobile devices increased 176 percent this year, with 22.4 percent from tablets and 4.4 percent from phones. Phone revenue is still relatively paltry. This year, though, tablets may have reached the tipping point as consumers are becoming more accustomed to settling in on the couch and shopping on their tablets in the evening hours.

Mercent saw Google Shopping growing faster than Amazon.com as a source of orders for their clients over the two-day period. Google’s efforts to provide more engaging shopping tools for consumers appear to be paying dividends.  Mercent reports that while Amazon grew 26 percent year-over-year on Thanksgiving, Google Shopping grew almost 70 percent.  The channels posted similar results on Black Friday.

When Should You Overhaul Your PPC Account Structure?

Let’s start by looking at a hypothetical scenario:

You’ve just been put in charge of a PPC account — either in-house or as part of an agency shakeup. It’s an account with a lot of history, and it is hitting goals, but…

After a few days spent familiarizing yourself with this account, you come to the conclusion that it’s not structured the way you would like. You sense a lot of opportunities for improvement: ad groups with too many keywords, budgets being eaten up by broad terms, keywords cannibalizing traffic from each other… and so on.

It’s at this point you need to come to a decision about how you’re going to move forward with the account:

• Start gradually tweaking things within the current structure to generate improvements?

- Or -

• Knock it all down and start from scratch?

Which would you go for?

This is a question we ask ourselves a lot when a new client comes on board, and it can be trickier to answer than you think. There are many different factors that determine which path to take. For one, building out a new structure is time-consuming. If the account is in good shape, you might be able to generate much better short-  and medium-term results by working with what you have. On the other hand, an account that’s in bad shape is going to be tough to work with and might not be able to hit the goals you’ve been given.
Some agencies will always redesign accounts completely from scratch. This can be helpful for a couple of reasons:

• You can easily train people to understand all the accounts you manage
• It speeds up repetitive tasks that are handled across a team of people

I’m not personally convinced it is always necessary or the right thing to do. If I came in as an in-house PPC manager, would my first actions be to tear down the current account and replace it with one I had built? Unless the account was in dire straits, probably not.

When Should You Restructure/Start Over?

I have a few personal metrics that I use:

• An account more than 25% away from goal that doesn’t show improvement month-over-month
• An account hitting goal that is showing non-seasonal, non-competitor related decline month-over-month for 3 straight months
• Accounts with median keywords-per-ad-group over 30

Is Restructuring Always A Good Idea?

There are two competing ideologies at play here: “PPC Best Practices” and business reality. Take a look at the following graph, which highlights what we typically see after an account restructure for an account that is in the “good, not great” mold:

Performance initially drops with the shakeup. New keywords, bids and ads all come into play. It can take up to a few months for performance to get back to where it was under the old system.

Accounts that don’t respond well to change initially seem to have a peculiar trait in common: a ton of history and very little activity. Huge accounts that have just kind of sat there for years with very few changes tend, for some reason, to give us the biggest headache. Internally, we speak of accounts having their own personalities. In this case, I picture a grumpy old man in his chair — when you wake him up, he starts cursing at everyone and heads back to sleep.

For the business side of things to go smoothly, you’ll need to project at what point you break even. Take a look at the cumulative frequency of conversions from the previous chart. The red line below represents overall sales had we not rebuilt. The blue line shows post-rebuild performance.
Notice there is a 6-week period in which our total sales were below expectations. I like to call this the “valley of client unhappiness.” The trick to surviving it is setting expectations, showing incremental gains every week and communicating constantly. Make sure everyone is aware of the long-term reasoning behind your account changes so there is a reduced chance of knee-jerk reactions.

Rules To Follow For Restructuring An Account

I went back and analyzed post-rebuild account performances for our clients. There was a fairly even split between this delayed improvement and immediate improvements being seen.
I’m sure a few of you, particularly within specialized verticals, haven’t ever had to deal with accounts that drop after “improvements.” You are either great at PPC or very lucky. For those of you like me who are neither, the following are the steps I put in place to maximize the chance of success with restructuring:

1. Make Sure Everyone Buys In
This is absolutely crucial if you want to succeed long-term. Sit down with your boss/client and spell out why you think the restructure is needed (it will improve long-term performance), what the negatives will be (short-term problems), and a rough approximation of how long it will be until this change pays off. If you can lay this out ahead of time, you won’t have to scramble to explain performance in the short term.
By ensuring you have buy-in, it also gives your boss/client another chance to stop you and say, “Hang on, we need every sale we can get right now, don’t blow things up until after Black Friday.”

2. Keep Bids The Same Where You Can
One of the simplest practical tips you can use when rebuilding an account is to keep things as similar as possible bid-wise at the start. New blanket bids will be much less efficient than ones that have been reached over months of tweaking.
I find the easiest way to do this is with a VLookup formula in Excel. Find out what your existing bids are and apply them anytime that same keyword and match type combination shows up.

3. Have An Overlap Period
Very rarely do I transition account structures without some kind of overlap period. This involves uploading the new structure without deleting the old. This allows time for my ads to start impressing and my image ads to be approved — and for me to fix any issues that almost always arise.

4. Recognize Your Failures
In business language, sticking with a failed change because you invested too much time and money into it is known as a sunk cost. Make sure your best AdWords efforts don’t turn into sunk costs of your own. Give your new account structure time to work, but recognize when it isn’t making things better. Typically, after a month or so, you should be able to tell if things are improving.
Along this train of thought, always download a backup of your account when you make big changes. There’s nothing worse than messing everything up and not being able to hit the reset switch.

5. Start With The Best Ad Only
If you want your restructure to be successful in the very short term, starting with only your historically best performing ad copy is a good way to go. By beginning with 3+ ad tests, you are dividing your new traffic amongst ads that might well be much worse. Typically, I tend to build out my ad testing with my structure, but then hold off uploading all but my best ad until a week or two later.

6. Put Top Keywords In Their Own Ad Groups
A lot has been made of single keyword ad groups in the past year, and personally I like them for my top keywords. By putting your top 100 or so into individual ad groups, you can check on them more easily and tailor better ads for them.
Adding “Important Keyword” labels is a really good idea, too — just in terms of keeping track of everything. You don’t want to think to yourself, six months down the line, “Hmm, I’m sure [x] used to be a really important keyword for us….”

7. Use A Consistent Naming Structure
There are many different ways to name your campaigns and ad groups. From the hundreds of accounts I’ve looked at, it seems like almost all of them do things slightly differently. Sometimes it’s “Nike – Shoes – Search,” other times “Google | Search | Brands | Nike | Shoes.” Keeping things consistent from the start is going to help a lot down the line (and it’s probably half the reason to restructure an account in the first place).
As always, I’d love to hear your restructure success and horror stories. Have you ever had troubles with changes you thought should have been massively beneficial? Let us know in the comments section below!

Google Introduces Change To AdWords: Pay By Viewable Impression CPM Bidding

Google rolled out a major change to AdWords this week by introducing CPM bidding by viewable impressions. This change was first noticed by Kim Clinkunbroomer of Philly Marketing Labs.

Rather than charging advertisers on the traditional model of served impressions, this change to CPM bidding means that advertisers will be charged based on ad impressions that can actually be viewed in-screen by users. All campaigns running on the Google Display Network will now have this option.

Ads are deemed viewable by Google’s Active View reporting. Previously advertisers were charged based on whether or not their ad was “served,” which wouldn’t necessarily indicate it was viewed by the end user.

This is huge for advertisers, as comScore recently reported that 31 percent of online ads go unseen by users.

Google’s Active View technology will now also include metrics reporting for advertisers which will track viewable impressions, viewable click-through rate and Active View average CPM.

Surprisingly, Google has made little mention of this change themselves. The move by Google towards having advertisers pay by viewable impressions will eventually become standard industry-wide.

In June it was reported by the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) that marketers should be prepared to buy digital media based on viewability by the end of this year:

    The Media Rating Council (MRC) expects to lift its Viewable Impression Advisory by the end of this year, and at that time marketers will eagerly start buying digital media on viewable metrics. Publishers and agencies, we hope you’re ready.

With that being said, are you ready for this change to CPM bidding? Do you think it should become the industry standard sooner rather than later? Let me know what you think in the comments section.

Bing Ads Introduces Refined Broad Match Keyword Targeting

In an effort to help advertisers attract more click volume from the Yahoo Bing Network, Bing Ads has rolled out Broad Match keyword targeting. The company says that with refinements and ongoing updates the “Bing Ads platform is able to deliver Broad Match conversion metrics that are 85% of the percentage of Exact Match”.

The new Broad Match is designed to eliminate the need for endless keyword variations set on Exact or Phrase Match, while still maintaining quality control. Some 30 percent of daily searches on Bing are new, so Broad Match is meant to help cast a wider net to catch new, relevant search terms that may not already be in your account.  You’ll still want to keep a close eye on the search query report and add negatives as needed.
Bing Ads says its data shows that, on average, when an advertiser does not opt into Broad Match, they lose 57 percent of their total available impressions and 43 percent of clicks. One of More Effort of Bing Ads to bring more feature as same as Google Adwords

Note that Broad Match does not impact the quality scores of your Exact or Phrase match keywords.
Here’s the current overview of match type settings in Bing Ads:

Now “Undo” Google AdWords Changes From Change History Reports

Taking action after a completing a test in Google AdWords may just have become a whole lot easier. An new “undo” button was spotted last night in the Change History.

Here’s a screenshot from Heather’s account after she clicked on the “undo” button next to one of the line items. Heather notes that a new line item is created when the change is marked as undone, and the “undo” button is made available in case you want to revert back again.


The feature doesn’t appear to have rolled out to everyone yet, so you’re not alone if you don’t see it yet.

Boost Your CTR for the Holidays by Picking Your Best Creative

Testing is a great thing, but it’s also important to know when and how to pick a winner and reap the benefits of your hard work.

Choose strategic moments to remove your worse performing ads and apply the lessons that you’ve learned.  There are times, such as the holiday shopping season when user search interest reaches its peak, when it’s in your best interest to run with your best performing creative.

Testing sacrifices some short term efficiency to ultimately improve your account in the long run.  For that reason, there is an opportunity cost to leaving your tests running longer than they need to.  Take a look at this example:

Ad A and Ad B have minor differences in performance, but Ad A still generates two more leads at a cheaper rate.  Here’s what the account would look like running Ad A all by itself:

 Even with the small differences in the example, there is a tangible benefit to reallocating your impressions to the absolute best creative.  Imagine what could happen if all of those impressions in your account (where the differences in CPC, CTR and conversion rate might be much bigger than this example) are going to the best possible creative.

There are a number of different processes that you can follow (depending on your rotation settings) to get your best ads to show for those valuable holiday impressions.

If your campaign is using auto-optimization, we’ll automatically bias impressions toward the ads that are statistically likely to perform better.  While poorly performing ads are already being shown infrequently, it might also be time to cut out the fat.

Starting with your highest volume ad groups, identify the worst performing ads and delete them.  You’ll be able to spot them quickly based on relatively poor performance and low impressions compared to the top performers in their ad group.

If your ads are set to rotate evenly (or indefinitely), start with high volume ad groups where ads have had enough impressions with which you can confidently make a decision.

When manually optimizing, you’ll have to decide which metric is most important to you.  Consider creating your own metrics, such as conversions/thousand impressions or revenue/thousand impressions.

As your tests are concluded, don’t restart them during your heavy season.  Let your top ads shine throughout your peak season, but keep track of ad groups that are no longer testing (via labels) so that you can easily restart your tests once things settle down.

Two things to remember for either of these processes:

1. Make sure to look at your mobile-preferred ads separately from your desktop ads, as these will likely perform differently than their desktop counterparts. 
2. It's possible that certain keywords within an ad group perform best with ads other than the top performer. This might happen in an ad group comprised of disparately themed keywords (check your new-and-improved opportunities tab for places this may be happening in your account). You can see the performance of each ad against each keyword by segmenting your ad report by keyword. One solution might be to separate such keywords into their own ad group, so they can serve against the ad with which they perform the best.

What if your ad tests don’t have enough data?

This happens all the time, particularly with smaller ad groups and campaigns.  You’ll have three options to end these tests:

Directional: Pick the ad that is in the lead at this moment.  It couldn’t pass through any peer-reviewed scientific journals, but you’re still basing your decision on recent performance.

Referential: Look for trends in messaging within your high volume ad groups.  If it’s the same basic test across both ad groups (i.e. one main benefit against another), you can reasonably infer that the ads will perform similarly.  Ensure that whatever significant tests you refer to are similar enough to make sense.  You wouldn’t want your successful messaging about shoes to decide how you’ll sell vacation plans.  Boots, however, could potentially apply the lessons from shoe ads.

Indeterminate: Continue to wait until your tests get more information, possibly enabling auto-optimization for your ads.  Not acting is a defensible decision, but it won’t improve your performance immediately.  Low volume ad groups are almost always going to continue being low volume, so the sooner you get comfortable making decisions with limited information on those ad groups, the sooner you could start to see performance improve.

Whichever route you decide to take, you should still end up with two ads in each of your ad groups - one for desktop and one for mobile-preferred.

If you’re merely pausing your ads (since you don’t have enough traffic yet), make sure that you’re labelling them intelligently and clearly so that tests can be resumed once the time is right.

Ending tests doesn’t mean you’re against testing.  Testing is a great thing that leads to a healthy account and a well-informed, data-driven advertiser.  Ending a test is a little like pushing your car into the red - you do it when you need to, but if you do it all the time you’re going to eventually stall out.

This holiday season, treat your account right by cleaning out your low performing ad copy.  Then, when things slow down and you have a nice, clean account to work with, you can restart your testing with something new from our Creatives That Clicks whitepaper.

Using Paid Search To Aid Your SEO

A lot has changed in the world of search marketing over the last year. From Enhanced Campaigns to Hummingbird and not provided, search marketers have had to rethink and re-calibrate their strategies significantly. Some changes caused more uproar than others; but, one thing has become increasingly clear: the art and science of both SEO and paid search, respectively, are on a crash course, and a consolidated strategy is required to get the most out of both channels.

At my agency, we’ve been working on ways to get more creative with our PPC campaigns in order to directly benefit our SEO efforts. PPC has much more immediate and measurable results than SEO, and as a result, we can use paid search as a testing environment for SEO strategies. The goal is to provide a proof of concept before investing any long-term resources into a project.
In the holiday spirit, we’d like to share three of the concepts we’ve tested and had some success with.

1. Keyword Identification

Both paid search and SEO revolve around keyword lists. Paid search provides one of the cleanest environments for organically identifying search queries used to reach your site.

Search Query Reporting

When using paid search to inform your SEO keywords, you should:

1. Identify the highest converting and highest cost-per-click keywords in your paid campaigns driving high value visits
2. Organize by difficulty to rank organically on these terms through Google keyword planner and SERP analysis

Prioritize SEO resources to rank for converting and/or high-value, visit-generating search terms by developing and promoting content around those terms.

2. Title & Meta Description Testing

Paid search ad copy consists of a maximum 95 characters. Meta descriptions are optimally 155 characters. Those aren’t exact matches, but the character limits are close enough to legitimize a testing ground for user preference.
AB test description snippets in ads tied to relevant keywords. Let click-through rates dictate description evolution while considering Quality Score improvements as Google’s way of suggesting what is and isn’t relevant.

Meta Description Opportunities

In the example above, Foot Locker could use proven paid search ad copy to write up an engaging meta description.

3. “Proof Of Content” Testing

Targeting a highly competitive term for SEO can be costly. Working all the way to the top only to find out that your content is not what users are looking for is both frustrating and a waste of resources.
Paid search can be an effective way to quickly and efficiently send traffic to new content to gauge user reaction and test interaction rates. If users like the content, so should Google.
Build out a handful of ad groups with highly relevant keywords and ad copy directing traffic to the content you wish to promote. If the call-to-action is clear, then the data should tell you fairly quickly whether or not the content is viable and potentially valuable.
The cost to generate a statistically significant amount of data via paid search is far less than the cost of technical resources to rank organically in a top position.

Concluding Thoughts

Whether your marketing department is on a shoestring budget or you work for a large corporation with unlimited resources, you need to be intelligent about prioritizing your search marketing efforts. Chances are your paid search team is already doing most of these tasks and can easily incorporate some ad hoc analysis to aid SEO efforts.

17 SEO Best Practices That Could Double Your E-Commerce Sales

When I first tell clients that SEO can double online sales for consumer e-commerce retailers, they are skeptical. But not after I demonstrate how I’ve done it for e-shops website using 8 effective SEO tips.
It sounds unrealistic — but isn’t. E-commerce SEO and conversion rate optimization can double your traffic and sales. When I show them proof, my prospective clients have many questions about generating more traffic, boosting conversions, increasing sales, engaging buyers and turning them into fans. Here are the most popular questions — and my answers.

Question #1: How Do I Deal With Out-Of-Stock Items?

It depends on several factors, but here’s what I recommend.
Leave the pages up. If the items will be in stock later, leave pages up just the way they are. Don’t delete, hide or replace them. Don’t add another product to them or redirect visitors to other pages.
Offer alternative items. If specific products are sold out, offer highly relevant alternatives through widgets on the site. Some examples:

• Same product in other colors
• Newer models or versions
• Identical products from other brands
• Other products in the same category that match in quality and price

You’re providing customers a great service and they’ll appreciate it. It also helps search engines find relevant pages and understand your site structure better.
Inform users when it will return. Always offer an expected date when the product will be back in stock so visitors will know when to come back and buy.
Offer to backorder the product. Let them order and promise to have it sent out to them as soon as fresh supplies arrive. Prospective buyers who really want the product won’t mind waiting a few extra days for it.
Soften the blow. Provide consolation by offering them some benefit, like a price reduction when fresh stocks arrive. This may keep them interested in buying later.

Question #2: What Do I Do With Obsolete/Expired Products?

All e-commerce websites have products that will never come back, like consumer electronics or fashion clothing stores that constantly replace products with newer models and styles.
Many e-commerce websites delete the pages and take no further action. From an SEO perspective, this is bad. You lose SEO value, and people who bookmarked the URL will get an error message.
The most appropriate solution will depend on many things.

1. Permanently 301 redirect expired product URLs. If the expired product is replaced by a newer model, using a 301 permanent redirect from the older page to the newer model’s URL tells Google you want this page ranked instead. Your SEO value will be retained.
2. Redirect to parent category. The underlying intent is to solve a visitor’s problem. If you have other relevant products that serve the same purpose as the expired item, you can direct visitors to the parent category.
3. Permanently delete the expired product’s pages, content and URLs. When you have no closely related products to the one that’s expired, you may choose to delete the page completely using a 410 status code (gone) which notifies Google that the page has been permanently removed and will never return.
4. Reuse URLs. If you sell generic products where technical specifications and model numbers are not relevant, you could reuse your URLs. That way you will preserve the page’s authority and increase your chances of ranking on Google.
5. Some items deserve to live on. Certain products may have informational value for existing customers or others wanting to research it. Leave these pages intact. Previous buyers can get information, help and service through these pages.

Question #3: How Do I Deal With Seasonal Products?

Aim to strengthen the product categories. Focus on product categories and link seasonal products to them with breadcrumbs and links in the descriptions on the product pages. Optimize your most important product pages with the greatest potential and spend the rest of your SEO budget to strengthen product categories.
If you’re launching a popular product and know there will be a big demand for it, add a “coming soon” page in the URL structure and offer unique content, launch notifications and pre-order forms. Integrate social media into this page and warm up prospects with user generated content.
With annual releases that you know will be replaced annually, simply add the year in the URL like this: website.com/category-sub-category/product-name-2012/ and 301 redirect it to the website.com/category-sub-category/product-name-2013/ version when the new version replaces it.

Question #4: How Do I Handle SEO For New Products?

Good information architecture, website structure and internal link architecture are critical to rank new product pages well. Link categories from your home page, and your product pages from the category levels. This will ensure that Google finds, crawls and indexes your content fast. Also link to them from their parent category pages.
Optimize your website theme so that new products are always presented on your home page where they’ll get found and indexed. A good internal link architecture will get your new product pages indexed and ranked quickly.

Question #5: How Do I Deal With Products Pages With Little Or No Unique Content?

With all the challenges of running an e-commerce enterprise, few businesses think about unique content on product pages. Many pull product information from a database, leading to duplicate content problems.
Some pages have little more than a product photo. This leaves the search engines with no way to understand what this page is about, how it relates to other pages on your site, and how relevant it is for search users.

1. Add content for your most popular products. Start by identifying your best-selling and most popular product pages using Web analytics tools and then updating them with content manually.
2. Strengthen your product categories. You can’t produce text for 100,000 different products. Instead, focus your SEO on strengthening the products’ parent category. Improve internal link architecture, breadcrumbs, and add relevant products to feed the search bots and teach them what your site is about.
3. Add user generated content. It can effectively differentiate your product pages from other duplicates on the Web. Social media works well. Endorsements and reviews from happy users or customers will not only enhance your SEO campaign but also boost sales conversions.

Question #6: How Do I Present Product Descriptions From Manufacturers?

Google doesn’t like duplicate content. Reprinting product descriptions from manufacturers is duplicate content. But large e-commerce websites cannot rewrite all product descriptions and specifications.
You can get around this by adding unique content like user-generated comments and reviews around it. Invite user comments. Integrate social networking. Let users tell their stories. Happy customers will serve as your marketing helpers.

1. Add content to product pages. Raise the quality and uniqueness of your content by personalizing it to solve your users’ problems. Add information, images, video or suggestions to your content.
2. Add a “psychology” layer to your content. Typical product descriptions are dull and technical. People, however, buy on emotion and feelings. Bring your product descriptions to life by telling a story.

Question #7: How Do I Deal With Product Variations (Colors, Sizes, Etc.)?

Some products are almost identical but exist in different colors or sizes. If not handled right, listing them can be considered duplicate content, which causes bad rankings and cannibalization between the different product variants. Products may rank for the wrong keywords (blue jeans rank for searches on red jeans). Adam Audette goes deeper into the nuances in this excellent report.
Review your website and you might find many products that may sell better if ranked for the right keywords.

Question #8: How Do I Handle Category Pages?

Next to the home page, category pages are the most powerful and popular ones.

1. Treat category pages as individual home pages. Look at your categories as silos or niches that contain closely related product pages.
2. Add content to your category pages. You’ll find some excellent tips in this article.
3. Build deep-links to product categories. Guest blogging, content marketing and even paid ads work well, as does social media.
4. Tag socially shared content. Be strategic about sharing links on Google Plus, Twitter and other networks. Be specific with your tags.
5. Take charge of what’s being shown/presented. Design category pages to provide search engines and users the best service.
6. Use search-friendly URLs. This often gets quick results because you are giving the search engines strong hints about what this URL is about while giving visitors help and valuable information — just make sure to avoid keyword stuffing. The most effective URL structure for category pages (and product pages) is:

• Category Page: Website.com/category/
• Sub-category page: Website.com/category/sub-category/
• Product page: website.com/category-sub-category/product-name/

Question #9: How Do I Manage Internal Link Building & Architecture?

Internal link building helps with SEO and rankings. But to achieve better results, you need link architecture, not just “link building.” Internal linking is not all about search engine spiders. User friendliness also matters. Creating a solid internal link architecture needs planning and takes time.

1. Offer category level navigation. This makes it easier for your users to get an overview of what they will find in the subcategories and pages. Strive to keep things contextually relevant.
2. Link to category-level relevant products. Look at this from a human perspective by taking intent and needs into consideration, but also optimize for the right keywords.
3. Use breadcrumbs on all pages and category pages. This ensures that users and Google can navigate up one level to a parent category.

Question #10: How Do I Leverage User Generated Content?

Don’t shy away from user-generated content — unless you’re afraid of honest opinions about your products and services. There are two obvious SEO benefits from user generated content:

• Better conversion rates and sales
• The unique content ranks higher and provides “freshness”

Integrated into your product pages, user generated content can enliven your site. Good reviews boost sales conversion. Users become part of a happy community. Prospective buyers see vibrant activity which convinces them to buy more easily.

1. Build a “community” of happy users. Publish buyer testimonials and reviews. Share blog posts from your happy customers. Use excerpts from a positive review to convince visitors that they can trust you — trust is king and social media helps you showcase it effectively.
2. Use Schema.org. Schema.org review markup lets you get stars beside your listing in the SERPs from individual product pages, and this affects click-through rates.
3. Integrate social media on product pages. Instagram, Facebook comments, Pinterest pins and Google +1s can be integrated into your site to present social proof. Post photos of happy buyers using your product.

The “new SEO” requires that you think about the psychology of your visitors more than the technology of your website.

Question #11: How Do I Weave SEO Into The Web Design Process?

Web design isn’t just about visual appeal. You need a specialist e-commerce Web designer who’s experienced and will work as a team with your SEO consultant, analyst, conversion rate optimizer and others. You must give them space and budgets to act as experts.
When your website design and information architecture work in tandem, with no pages/URLs breaking out of the structure, you’ll boost the entire site every time you publish a new product page and ensure early crawling by search spiders. Good design and content along with a pleasant visitor experience will generate more sales.

1. Failing to plan is planning to fail. SEO must be baked into the business/website early in the planning phase, before you even start working on your wireframes and design process — not after the site is launched. Making awesome category/section templates and having product pages promote them with internal links is very effective.
2. SEO for e-commerce websites is different from traditional SEO. E-commerce SEO requires a consultant skilled in multiple disciplines, with a deep understanding of human psychology, conversion rate optimization, analytics, Web design & development, social media marketing and communication, copywriting, economy, usability and user experience. The best e-commerce SEO specialists also have deep insight and understanding of commerce and how a retail business functions.
3. E-commerce Web design is never “finished.” It’s a continuous process of A/B testing to hunt down the best performing variations. The right “tools” are important, but the best consultant or company is more important. An expensive consultant is not expensive if she can generate many more sales than a “cheap” one.

Question #12: How Do I Organize Related Products On The Site?

Presenting relevant related items on product pages can boost sales. Meta data from your PIM ensures that all items presented are relevant, personalized and in stock. Your Web designer and developers must also focus on internal link architecture.

1. Be relevant. If visitors arrive on a product page for the latest Apple iPhone, you should also suggest other relevant products, based on the cost, quality and persona of this buyer. The latest Google Nexus might be a similar product, but a loyal Apple acolyte may never buy it anyway! Measure and optimize product suggestions.
2. Location or placement. Let the product featured on the page stand out and shine. Give it space. Don’t clutter it up with other suggestions. Don’t waste your best location on products that don’t sell and are not popular.

Question #13: How Do I Leverage Internal Site Search?

It’s shocking that experts optimizing a site for Google search don’t optimize for their own internal search engine on e-commerce websites! That’s often because they overlook or underestimate the role of internal search, losing sales. People searching with misspellings, synonyms, hyphenation or spacing errors are not taken to the appropriate product pages. They should be.

1. Enable tracking of your site search. Use tools which allow you to see keywords people are searching for within your site, and calculate the revenue they generate.
2. Count popular searches. They can mean your product is popular and can be profitable. They may also indicate that people are not finding what they came to your site for!
3. Use a tool like Crazy Egg to track clicks and see how people behave on your home page, important category pages and on product pages.
4. Think of your site search results pages as “landing pages.” The search results should be relevant and help users solve their problems. Make sure you “noindex” your search results.
5. Include site search in your keyword research. Analyze what your visitors are searching for to find new product ideas, locate potential areas for improvements, identify popular products, and overcome problems with search and usability.
6. Test your site search and fix errors. Type some of the keywords you’ve uncovered into your internal search and see what they find as a result. When you fix whatever is broken, sales will shoot up!
7. Optimize internal search. Make sure every internal search finds the right product. This requires tweaking meta-data within your e-commerce solution. By handling this through meta-data, you won’t create pages loaded with incorrect or misspelled words.

Question #14: How Do I Optimize Product Pictures And Videos?

The quality of your pictures, photos and videos will influence how visitors feel about your product. Never underestimate the value of making prospective buyers feel the benefits of your product.
Interesting pictures get shared on Pinterest and social networks. Getting users to tag and comment on photos also makes your content unique. Your brand grows stronger as word of mouth spreads. With optimized images, you can even pull in more traffic from Google image search.

1. Use high-quality pictures. Get photographs that create an atmosphere, that make prospects feel something. Those will make more sales. Though expensive, it’s a good investment for your best products. Video can work even better.
2. Optimize your images. File name, alt text, caption, etc., should be short yet descriptive. These are opportunities to provide search engines with clues as to what your image content is.
3. A/B-test options. Try one picture against another to see which gives better conversion rates.

Question #15: How Do I Put Up Pages For Products On Sale?

Specify the canonical URL in the HTTP header of the product page for an item on sale. This tells Google it’s a duplicate of another URL, and to rank the unique version of the page, not this one.

Question #16: How Do I Design For Mobile Devices?

Mobile is too important to ignore in your e-commerce SEO strategy. An informal survey my colleague Kenneth Gvein ran for our e-commerce customers at Metronet and Vaimo Norway found that clients had 2 to 3 times higher growth rate on mobile e-commerce. Go mobile — or go home!
Offer desktop versions of all URLs. Some users prefer the standard Web version, even on mobile. Offer the option to switch between versions. Don’t return them to the home page like many e-commerce websites do.

Question #17: How Do I Deal With Security?

Your customers are worried about online security — with good reason. They put their identity and financial data in your hands. You must reassure them that it’s safe.
Leave visual clues. Display logos and text certifying that you comply with security standards. Show them your SSL/Visa/other security and encryption standards or certificates. Tell them that shopping at your e-commerce website is 100% safe. This boosts conversions.
Many e-tailers hide this information at the bottom of a page, or simply take it for granted. Don’t make that mistake.

Best Practices and Routines — Top Tips For Every E-Commerce Website

1. Periodic SEO analysis: SEO is not static, nor is your e-commerce website. Your site and code will change. A developer may, with the best intent at heart, fix one problem but create another. Use a strategic SEO framework to ensure that everything is in sync with your economic and strategic goals.
2. Use Google Webmaster Tools: This free tool helps webmasters find and fix vexing SEO problems. Establish a routine in which you:

• Look for 404 errors, soft 404′s and other problems
• See how your website, products and pages are performing on the SERPs
• Notice popular keywords and phrases, popular pages and more

I recommend integrating Google Webmaster Tools, Google AdWords and Google Analytics to get access to valuable information for free.
3. Take action: Just monitoring data isn’t enough. You must identify the actionable items to keep improving. Know what to look for and why. Spot problems with indexing, duplicate content, manual penalties from Google and more. Fix the problems promptly.
4. Invest in SEO tools: Tools like Moz, Search Metrics, Raven SEO Tools, Deep Crawl and others help you to identify problems and offer suggestions to fix them. Set up actionable reporting. Establish routines to address problems. Each tool has unique advantages. As a consultant, I recommend using a combination of tools for e-commerce SEO.
5. Do manual (sample) testing: Use Screaming Frog SEO Spider to identify problems with pages and sections of your e-commerce website. Pick one product segment that is important to you and perform an analysis within specific categories and subcategories. Often you’ll track down site-wide problems caused by your CMS that can be quickly fixed.
6. Data analysis is the new gold: Everything you do can be done better, but you don’t have the resources to do it all. You need analysis to help prioritize areas for improvement. Build dashboards containing actionable information.
7. Take the mobile revolution seriously: Mobile devices are growing fast. Delays in developing your mobile site can kill your online business. What experience are you giving mobile users and how can you improve?
It’s not possible to cover everything about SEO for e-commerce sites in one article. The advice above has helped many e-commerce websites increase sales and revenue by large multiples, but it is only the tip of the iceberg.
If you have any more tips or advice you think our other readers should know about, please add them as a comment to this post. I’m looking forward to hearing from you.

How & When You Can Turn SEM From A Checkbox To A Core Business Component

Search Engine Marketing (SEM) is no longer a “nice to have” for businesses, but rather a “must have.” This wasn’t the case 10 years ago, when SEM got dumped into the “test budget” if there was any money left over after TV, radio, print, out-of-home, display, email, SEO, PR and sponsorships.

It turns out, however, that simply having room in the marketing budget does not mean that SEM is truly valued by C-level executives — or often, even by the VP of Marketing.
Broadly speaking, I’ve found that there are two types of companies: companies where SEM is core to their business, and companies where SEM is just a checkbox. The category your company falls into will vastly impact your ability to secure resources, take risks, and get budget.
Let’s break down the categories and what they mean.

Core SEM — You Matter!

Let’s start by talking about the easier category: “core” SEM. Core SEM companies depend on SEM as a significant — often the most significant — driver of new customer acquisition. These companies are frequently online-first businesses, like a software-as-a-service (SaaS) technology, a website, or a business that has seen their consumers switch from shopping in physical stores to shopping online.

A core SEM company is willing to make deep investments to be successful at SEM. These companies will hire SEM experts in-house, buy best-of-breed technology (campaign management, tag management, attribution, feed management, analytics, etc.), vet agencies carefully for relevant and high-level SEM expertise, often have unlimited budgets to spend (assuming they hit their KPIs), and have a direct line to the CMO and even the CEO.

As an SEM practitioner, working at a core company means that you have a spotlight on your work. If you are confident in your creed and are driving great results, that spotlight can be a lot of fun (and make you a nice salary). Bad results, of course, can put tremendous pressure on the SEM team, and executives will act quickly to remedy problems. (To quote Donald Trump: “You’re fired!”)

Checkbox SEM – Who Are You Again?

If you work at a checkbox SEM company, you probably already know it without me having to explain the category. Checkbox SEM companies spend money on SEM because they have to. This typically means that the company predominantly relies on offline sales (e.g. GM) and/or is heavily brand-focused. As a result, these companies spend 90%+ of the SEM budget on brand terms (e.g. Coach bags). Alternatively, the company might be a “new mousetrap” that sells a product or service that people don’t yet search for (e.g. a new mobile game application).

Perhaps most importantly, checkbox SEM companies drive very little revenue, sales, or growth from non-brand SEM. This is an important point to consider. Simply spending $1 million/month on SEM does not turn your company into a core SEM business — if your SEM budget is mainly just a slush fund to capture brand queries (driven through demand creation, word-of-mouth, or brand marketing channels), you are working at a checkbox SEM company.

As a result, checkbox SEM companies sometimes don’t even hire SEM experts in-house to manage their campaigns, tend to invest in the bare minimum of ad tech to support their teams, have fixed non-brand budgets, and look to consolidate their SEM spend under one agency (usually a big agency that is known for creative work, media planning, and top-of-funnel marketing, and also happens to do SEM “because they have to”).

A Brief Aside – the Agency Perspective

As the head of an SEM-heavy digital marketing agency, I’ve learned how important it is to assess whether a potential client is core or checkbox. For SEM-focused or direct-response agencies like mine, core SEM clients are our bread and butter. We don’t have 129 offices around the world, a massive creative team, or the ability to run TV ads in Farsi for clients. What we do have is the ability to (hopefully) drive better results than a bigger, more broadly focused agency, and to provide better strategic SEM guidance.

Conversely, when I get introduced to a checkbox SEM company, I’ve learned (the hard way) that the chances of this company working with my agency are virtually nil. Checkbox SEM companies choose their agencies based on a combination of CYA (“I won’t get fired if I hire a big agency”) and ease of management (“I don’t want to manage 10 agencies; I want to manage one agency”).

For what it’s worth, I don’t blame checkbox SEM companies for making these choices. After all, if your company doesn’t really see SEM as a crucial driver of business, why would you want to take a risk on a smaller agency and have to subject yourself to yet another weekly check-in that takes you away from actually doing work?

Can You Go From Checkbox to Core?

So let’s say you are at a checkbox SEM company, and you’d like to transform your company into a core SEM shop. How do you do it? For starters, it’s worth pointing out that there are many companies that simply shouldn’t put a focus on SEM, so don’t try to turn a moth into a butterfly.
I’ve described many of these above — companies that sell things that people don’t search for, for example, will never be able to focus on SEM until their demand creation efforts start to drive consumers to actually search for their products. So the first step is to assess whether there’s a realistic chance of driving meaningful non-brand SEM volume for your business.

Assuming there is a chance, transformation from checkbox to core must have buy-in from the top. At a minimum, the VP of Marketing needs to support the initiative with resources, funding, and air cover. You may also need to bring in SEM expertise to help you hit your numbers. This could mean severing your SEM agency management from a giant holding company and awarding it to a specialist shop, but it could also mean hiring internal SEM experts to help run the program. Either way, to compete for the hard words — e.g., something beyond “Buy Coach Bags” — you need experts, internal buy-in, and resources.

Once you’ve got that support, you then need to prove the math behind the SEM. For this, I think the best metric for success is some combination of non-brand sales and new customer (or “new to file”) growth. For a company to “get” SEM, you need to show them that there are tons of hungry customers out there being lost to the competition, simply because your budget doesn’t allow you to compete on non-brand terms.
Like SEM in general, engendering this sort of transformation isn’t easy. Indeed, it is probably a much harder challenge than most of the tactical SEM work you do on a daily basis. But then, you didn’t get into SEM to lead a simple life, did you?