Learn how to create authoritative topic clusters and better content with this step-by-step guide to topic modeling.
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Google's Lizzi Sassman & John Mueller describe the best way to write alt text for logos and images
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If you’re just getting started with Google Looker Studio, you’ve probably experienced blank-page syndrome.
You get your data source connected, open up a new file, and you have no idea what to do next.
There are no instructions. No guide rails. Just you and an empty page to fill.
And while you can start with a template (Google Looker Studio Report Gallery has several), it’s still tough to know how to customize it to perfectly fit your needs.
Here are some tried-and-true elements to include in PPC dashboards and reports that will banish blank-page syndrome and give your stakeholders the insights they crave.
When you add a chart in Google Looker Studio, you select the data source, dimensions, metrics and date range from the Data Panel to populate your visualization.
But your reader doesn’t see the Data Panel and won’t know what your chart is about unless you take an extra step to include it in your dashboard.
The two graphs below show identical data visualizations. Figure A includes only the chart, while Figure B includes written titles and context.
Figure A leaves questions in your reader’s mind that Figure B answers.
You can make your graphs and tables easier to understand at a glance with these tips:
How to do it:
It’s worth the small manual effort it takes to add a text box and include context!
You don’t need an article to tell you that your dashboard should include your key performance indicators (KPIs).
But while you’re planning out your dashboard, pay special attention to where to include them.
Your KPIs matter most in your report and deserve top billing.
That means showcasing your KPIs with scorecards like so:
Not as afterthoughts at the end of a table:
Not only do tables make it hard to identify KPIs, for languages that are read left to right, tucking KPIs on the far right of the table tells your reader these metrics are low priority.
Keep your reader focused on your key growth metrics like lead volume, revenue, or return on ad spend (ROAS), rather than vanity and traffic metrics like impressions and clicks.
How to do it:
Having KPIs appear in tables and other charts isn’t a problem, but give them added attention by using scorecards.
Some advertisers use fixed monthly or annual marketing budgets with no room for adjustments.
Others have sales or efficiency goals they need to hit with flexible budgets.
No matter what the approach, your dashboard should answer the question:
Are we meeting our objectives, and how do we know?
Account objectives aren’t standardized, and neither is the approach for including goal pacing in your dashboard.
Fortunately, Looker Studio gives you many options for adding objectives and pacing, from literally charting against a goal to adding a written description of the target.
Here are some examples of how you might anchor performance to a goal:
How to do it:
Including goal pacing gives your reader confidence in how to interpret performance data.
Trends and historical comparisons let your reader know if things are improving – or need improvement – over time.
Maybe you fell short of the goal, but you always miss it because it’s unrealistic.
Maybe you hit your goal, but you’re down compared to last year, and you need to take corrective action.
Don’t make your reader wonder whether current performance is average, down or “best month ever.”
Tables and scorecards give you an easy way to show your reader how performance for this period compares to another, using color-coded arrows to indicate the direction of the change (delta).
How to do it:
You can get a complete picture of performance trends using time series charts.
Rather than just comparing this period to the last period, you’ve got an entire history revealing trends in seasonality, market impact and more.
You can use a continuous Time series chart (shown above) or designate a comparison time period.
Here’s how that same data looks as a Year over Year (YoY) Time series chart. Note that the comparison year will show as a lighter shade of this period’s line:
Another way to show historical performance is with a line chart that uses a time period as a breakdown dimension.
This Line chart is from a report comparing CPCs before and during the Covid-19 pandemic:
How to do it:
A few important notes for trends and historical comparisons –
Okay, so tables aren’t that glamorous.
But if your Looker Studio dashboard doesn’t have a table, something’s probably missing.
Why? Because there are times when your audience needs to compare multiple categories across multiple metrics. And nothing does that more efficiently than a table.
Tables are great for comparing default categories like:
And depending on the complexity of your PPC dashboard, you can create tables for:
How to do it:
It’s easy to build tables and add metrics, and it’s easy to get carried away. Exercise some restraint and limit the number of metrics in your table, so it remains useful to your reader.
Our list constrained us to five categories, but here’s one bonus for making it to the end:
Shiny charts.
What are shiny charts?
Shiny charts are visualizations that your audience loves and gets excited about, even if they’re not super actionable.
Your readers may not learn anything new, but they’ll feel like they learned something new.
Maps are a great example.
Many dataviz experts say not to use map charts; there are better ways to communicate location data.
But try to find a client or stakeholder who doesn’t love to see performance data on a map. Go ahead. I’ll wait.
Sure it’s a bit counterintuitive when you’re trying to build out an actionable dashboard. Maybe even a bit controversial. And you don’t have to do it. But a chart that makes your audience feel good just for seeing it has its own merit.
While your Looker Studio dashboard can technically include whatever you want, it should at a minimum include:
These don’t need to (and can’t) all be discrete sections. One scorecard can include a title, KPI, pacing, and time comparison.
There are many other charts and visualizations that can take your PPC dashboard from good to great. Getting started with this list will set you up for success and give you a dashboard worth the time it took to build.
The post 5 things your Google Looker Studio PPC Dashboard must have appeared first on Search Engine Land.
Move beyond these common enterprise local SEO challenges. Read on to learn how to solve them.
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Whether you want to grow your page organically (or with paid tools), here are tips to grow faster and appear on your customers' feeds.
The post TikTok: Your Guide To Quickly Growing Followers appeared first on Search Engine Journal.
When it comes to SEO, your website is the foundation on which your hard work rests. Here are 10 tips for building a travel website.
The post 10 Dos And Don’ts For Building A Successful Travel Website appeared first on Search Engine Journal.
Learn how to recover ecommerce shoppers by reducing abandoned carts and improving customer loyalty to increase your online sales.
The post SafeOpt’s 10 Trusted Ecommerce Tips To Reduce Abandoned Carts & Increase Sales appeared first on Search Engine Journal.
Is paying for links worth the risk? In this piece, let's take a closer look at the practice of buying and selling links for SEO.
The post Buying Backlinks For SEO: Yes, This Is Still A Thing appeared first on Search Engine Journal.
Does offering different languages on your website and the way you organize localized pages affect organic search rankings?
The post Is Language A Google Ranking Factor? appeared first on Search Engine Journal.
Learn how to use the Keyword Planner tool so your PPC and SEO efforts can work together.
The post How To Use Google Ads Keyword Forecast Tool For Predictive Keyword Research appeared first on Search Engine Journal.
Learn how to get your website indexed as quickly as possible when launching.
The post How To Get Your Site Indexed Before Launch & Why It Matters appeared first on Search Engine Journal.
Know the difference between error 404s and soft 404s and learn how to fix the SEO issues behind them.
The post 404 vs. Soft 404 Errors: What’s The Difference & How To Fix Both appeared first on Search Engine Journal.
Google is rolling out new features for Performance Max campaigns and sharing best practices to help marketers promote holiday sales more efficiently.
The post Google Ads Performance Max New Features & Best Practices appeared first on Search Engine Journal.
Google advertisers can now advertise on podcasts.
Yep, announced today, “advertisers can now align their ads with podcast content globally. Simply create an audio or video campaign and select “Podcast” as a placement.”
Why we care. Last month we reported on three new audio, shopping, and streaming features available to YouTube advertisers. Today advertisers can officially select “podcast” as their preferred placement.
The post Google Ads podcast placement now available appeared first on Search Engine Land.
Google is pushing the sunset date of Universal Analytics 360 (UA360) to 2024, giving enterprise users more time to transition to Google Analytics 4 (GA4).
The post Google Pushes Universal Analytics 360 Sunset To 2024 appeared first on Search Engine Journal.
YouTube has just announced that licensed healthcare providers can now apply to make their channels eligible for new health product features – a suite of information resources released last year.
What this means. The health product features previously launched include health source information panels to help viewers identify videos from authoritative sources and health content shelves that highlight videos from these sources when you search for health topics, so people can more easily navigate and evaluate health information online.
Previously, those features have only been available to educational institutions, public health departments, hospitals, and government entities. The new guidelines will make the features available to a wider group of healthcare providers.
How to apply. Eligible healthcare providers can apply starting today using the guidelines below, taken directly from the YouTube blog announcement.
Applicants must have proof of their license, follow best practices for health information sharing as set out by the Council of Medical Specialty Societies, the National Academy of Medicine and the World Health Organization, and have a channel in good standing on YouTube. Full details on eligibility requirements are here.
All channels that apply will be reviewed against these guidelines, and the license of the applying healthcare professional will be verified. In the coming months, eligible channels that have applied through this process will be given a health source information panel that identifies them as a licensed healthcare professional and their videos will appear in relevant search results in health content shelves. Health creators in the US can apply starting October 27th at health.youtube, and we’ll continue to expand availability to other markets and additional medical specialties in the future.
Why we care. YouTube is trying to help people become more informed, engaged and empowered about their health by attempting to create a space where they can find reliable, factual, and informative content from legitimate healthcare providers.
However, not every licensed healthcare provider shares safe, proven, harmless content. Users should still do their due diligence to ensure that the content they are consuming is high quality.
Additionally, advertisers who work with licensed providers should apply for the new features today to ensure their channels have added visibility.
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Google's bumper ad tool, which shortens longer videos to six-second bumper ads, is now broadly available. Here's more information on how to use it.
The post Google’s Bumper Ad Creation Tool Is Broadly Available appeared first on Search Engine Journal.
Meta shared its 2022 Q3 earnings today and, as expected, performance left a lot to be desired. Advertising revenue came in at $27.2 billion, down roughly 4% year-over-year.
The positives. Overall ad impressions were up 17%, while the cost per ad decreased 18% YoY.
Monthly active users on the platform increased 2% to 2.96 billion YoY.
Not news. Meta isn’t alone when it comes to underperforming earnings. This week Google and Microsoft also released worse-than-expected results, to the disappointment of investors. SNAP also reported their slowest-ever quarterly growth last week, but added 6% more monthly users.
Frankly, Meta’s poor performance is (probably) no surprise to anyone. Meta shares are down nearly 60% YTD and inflation, a shaky economy, and privacy changes certainly contribute. At closing today, shared decreased another 7.69%.
iOS and ongoing TikTok competition. Meta is still dealing with a host of challenges due to the implementation of iOS14, including growing competition from TikTok, all of which have taken a toll on Meta’s ability to drive interest in both organic and advertising users.
Internal company documents obtained by the Wall Street Journal, indicate that Instagram users cumulatively are spending 17.6 million hours a day watching Reels, less than one-tenth of the 197.8 million hours TikTok users spend each day on that platform.
What meta says. “Our community continues to grow and I’m pleased with the strong engagement we’re seeing driven by progress on our discovery engine and products like Reels,” said Mark Zuckerberg, Meta founder and CEO. “While we face near-term challenges on revenue, the fundamentals are there for a return to stronger revenue growth. We’re approaching 2023 with a focus on prioritization and efficiency that will help us navigate the current environment and emerge an even stronger company.”
Dig deeper. You can review the Meta Investor Relations site with slides and a Webcast replay here.
Why we care. This quarters disappointing financials for both search and social could be a sign of an even bigger economic pitfall. Advertisers should prepare for higher CPCs, staff cuts, and increased costs all around.
The post Meta Q3 earnings: ad revenue declined 4%, but monthly users showing promise appeared first on Search Engine Land.
Viral tweet exposes the reasons why thousands of users feel dissatisfaction with Google Search
The post Why Tweet Comparing Google to Dying Mall Went Viral appeared first on Search Engine Journal.
Google has just announced the release of v12 of the API.
Here are the highlights. Taken directly from the Google Ads Developer Blog.
RaiseTargetCpaBidTooLowRecommendation and ForecastingSetTargetRoasRecommendation.Campaign to provide insight into why a campaign is not serving or not serving optimally.conversion_tracking_id will always be greater than 0 for all customers. In the previous versions, this field could be 0 for customers who had never created any conversion actions.SmartCampaignSuggestService.SuggestKeywordThemes to generate more keyword theme suggestions for Smart campaigns, including free-form keyword themes.ReachPlanService.CampaignAsset and AdGroupAsset with the field_type: AD_IMAGE (Image assets).Update your Client Library. Developers who want to utilize these new features will need to ensure their Client Libraries are updated.
Dig deeper. Get more information about the new release from the Developer Blog.
Why we care. The new API includes updated conversion tracking, removed support for certain features and campaigns, and supports additional services such as location targeting. Developers who utilize APIs should update their Client Libraries and implement the changes so they have the most updated features.
The post Google API v12 released appeared first on Search Engine Land.
Google is anticipating a busy holiday season this year. In preparation, they have just announced three new Performance Max features to help advertisers plan effective campaigns, customize their asset strategy, and evaluate your results.
Advertisers can use the new Performance Planner to create campaign plans and understand how to invest their budgets while maximizing ROI. The new planner is being launched now and will be available to all advertisers in the coming weeks.
Planner features. With the Performance Planner, advertisers can forecast how their campaigns may perform in the future, as well as what can happen when certain elements like bidding strategies are implemented.
Asset group scheduling. Asset group scheduling rolled out earlier this month. Now, you can add automated rules which allow you to schedule asset groups so they can be paused and enabled as needed. With scheduling, you can run ads at specific times of the day, or create and run different asset groups ahead of time.
More headlines to get your message across. The number of headlines you can upload to your Performance Max asset groups will increase from 5 to 15. Google says that by adding more headlines “you can take advantage of machine learning’s ability to create and test even more combinations to find the best-performing variations.”
Performance explanations. Explanations help you identify what’s driving performance fluctuations, diagnose issues, and view recommendations. You can see these in the explanations panels and they are available for all Performance max campaigns.
First-party audience insights. A cookieless future is imminent, but it doesn’t have to mean the end of accurate targeting. Now, you can add your data segments as audience signals in your Performance max campaigns. In the coming weeks, your data segments will be added to audience insights in the Insights page. These insights may help you understand the value of your first-party data and see which of your customer lists may be converting best.
Dig deeper. You can read the announcement from Google here.
Best practices. Google suggests the following best practices as you plan your holiday campaigns:
Why we care. The new features may help Performance Max advertisers optimize, measure, and take advantage of additional asset features. If you’re using Performance max, you should test and utilize these new features as soon as possible, ahead of the holiday season, to drive the most benefit.
Regarding Google’s best practices, I’m skeptical of their advice to wait “A few days leading up to peak holiday periods” to make such drastic changes. Come on, Google.
The post 3 new Google Performance Max features to plan campaigns, customize assets, and measure results appeared first on Search Engine Land.
Shares of Google-parent Alphabet are down sharply after the company's latest earnings report reveals the slowest quarter for revenue growth in almost a decade.
The post Google Reports Slowest Revenue Growth In Nearly 10 Years appeared first on Search Engine Journal.
Every five years Search Engine Land likes to put together a sort of birthday tribute to the search engine, online advertising, cloud computing, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, artificial intelligence, and consumer electronics giant that we know as Google. Take a look at their big 2-0.
But given all that’s happened in search the last two years, we think it’s about time to pop the champagne, cut the cake, and settle in for a new, yearly, honoring.
Let’s get to it!
Keyword match types seem to be the gift that keeps on giving, or in Google’s case, taking away. This time Google’s simplified phrase match worried advertisers with some acknowledging how similarly BMM and phrase match have behaved, and others denouncing the change as a move to strip away more data and controls from advertisers so that Google can extract as much profit from auctions as possible.
Farewell, broad-match modified keywords. Google expanded phrase-match to be included in broad match, to the chagrin of advertisers everywhere.
Advertisers will be able to use connected TV campaigns to target viewers across YouTube and “most” other connected TV apps. The new development will bring affinity, in-market, and demographic audience segments to connected TVs.
Advertisers will be able to reuse audiences across campaigns. When you build an audience to use in a campaign, Google Ads will save it so you can use it again in a future campaign.
Google Ads is renaming some key terms in your audience report and throughout Google Ads. You may have seen this already in some accounts. Google revealed this via this help documentation in September 2021.
Responsive Search Ads (RSAs) became the default ad type in 2021. RSAs allow advertisers to input multiple headlines and ad copy variations, and Google Ads uses machine learning to determine which variations to use based on what queries people are searching for.
An open beta allowed advertisers to see Display ads alongside search and YouTube for the first time in the Google Ads attribution report. Advertisers can see the ads in Top Paths, Model Comparison, Assisted Conversions and Path Metrics reports.
Automated vehicle ads were launched. The new format uses vehicle data feeds in Google Merchant Center to match users’ searches with ads.
Nine new policies were added to the three-strike system to target clickbait, misleading ad design, and more.
Bundled bid strategies have replaced standalone options. The Target CPA (tCPA) and Target ROAS (tROAS) Smart Bidding strategies will be bundled with the Maximize Conversions and Maximize Conversion Value bid strategies, respectively, Google announced Tuesday. Moving forward, Maximize Conversions will have an optional tCPA field, and Maximize Conversion Value will have an optional tROAS field.
Everyone’s favorite campaign type, Performance Max, became available to all advertisers. PMax includes Smart Shopping and Local campaigns, though Google eventually sunsetted Smart Shopping campaigns for good starting in January 2022.
Changes to automated extensions include extensions being shown together, an “Automatically Created Extensions” report, and the ability to add them at ad group, campaign, or account level.
The depreciation of third-party cookies was supposed to happen in 2022 but was ultimately pushed to 2023. With that, an alternative targeting technology known as Federated Learning of Cohorts (FLoC) was opened for advertiser testing in Q2 2021, with adoption slated for Q4 2022.
The FLEDGE sandbox has been unveiled along with plans to roll out several Privacy Sandbox initiatives on Android, including the Topics API, the FLEDGE API for custom audiences and remarketing, and the Attribution Reporting API. It began testing in March 2022.
Google’s 20th gave rise to an era of predictive marketing, using AI and machine learning to identify intent and predict customer needs, behavior and marketing outcomes.
YouTube gains access to Google data for audience targeting, effectively improving ad targeting and measurement across search and YouTube.
GA4 was also introduced, giving users expanded predictive insights, deeper integration with Google Ads, cross-device measurement capabilities and more granular data controls.
The way we manage search terms has changed. Close variants are no longer what they used to be and marketers are being forced to adapt to machine learning. “Google says its machine learning is now good enough to determine when a query has the same intent as a keyword with a high enough rate of success that advertisers will see an overall performance lift.” Awkward.
Google has loosened the reigns on close variant keywords. Broad match is super broad, exact match is more like phrase match, and phrase match is, well, gone?
Privacy concerns have forced Google to limit Search terms reporting. In a statement from Google, a spokesperson said, “In order to maintain our standards of privacy and strengthen our protections around user data, we have made changes to our Search Terms Report to only include terms that a significant number of users searched for. We’re continuing to invest in new and efficient ways to share insights that enable advertisers to make critical business decisions.”
RSAs and the start of the end for Expanded Text Ads began in 2020. The option for text ads was no longer the default option in the Ads dropdown. Advertisers are seeing only Responsive Search Ad (RSA) and Call ad.
Local Campaigns were introduced and aimed to drive in-store visits. Google automatically optimizes ad delivery across Search, YouTube, Maps and websites and apps in its ad networks.
Smart Campaigns debuted and were designed for small and local businesses that don’t have dedicated marketing staff and may not even have websites.
Smart Campaigns became the default campaign type for new advertisers in Google Ads. The campaigns are almost entirely automated and goals include phone calls, website visits and requests for directions.
Other new advancements in Search included:
While this is by no means a complete list, here are a few product development highlights from when Google launched the AdWords platform in 2000, all the way up to their 15th birthday.
Google launched its new self-service advertising program called AdWords. The program enabled “any advertiser to purchase individualized and affordable keyword advertising that appears instantly on the google.com search results page.”
The AdWords program replaced Google’s first ad program called Premium Sponsorships.
Check out this article we found from The Search Engine Report in 2000.
In 2006 Google decided to push forward with testing newspaper ads. If you’re curious, you can read the results here.
In the same year, they also began testing in-stream video ads with Beet.tv.
Google started promoting audio ads. The landing page it takes you to tells you to call one of Google’s sales offices if you wanted to advertise on the radio.
Pay-per-action ads were launched this year, allowing advertisers to only pay when their preferred action was completed, such as a sale or click.
Google also began testing its Keyword Tool, showing the number of the previous month’s searches. The tool shows actual numbers in search volume for the previous month for keywords.
Also happening this year, Google acquired DoubleClick from The New York Times for $3.1 billion.
In July Google announced that those personalized ads you see are influenced by previous searches. In response, Google said “What you’re seeing is that we look at the user’s previous query and see how well it intersects with the current query. If it’s significant, we’ll use it to help targeting on the current query. We simply look at what’s in the referring URL (every time you load a web page, the HTTP header includes your previous URL as the “referrer”).”
Google reaches 1 million advertisers! “An analyst from UBS estimated Google has between 1.3 million and 1.5 million advertisers. According to the analyst, it shows there is still room for a lot more growth in terms of the advertiser base.”
Google pitched its media buying dashboard to very skeptical agencies.
Google also announced third-party tracking for the content network. Thanks, Google!
This same year, Google also began testing showing product ads in search results.
The Inside AdWords Google Blog announced that all US-based advertisers should now have the TV ads option in their account. In fact, you should see the option after logging in to your AdWords account at the bottom, where it says “Other Campaign Types.”
Google’s newspaper ads initiative shuts down. Google said they are discontinuing this service because “the current Print Ads product is not the right solution.”
Google announced that they’re officially shutting down Google Audio Ads and Google Radio Automation.
The Google Base blog announced the launch of the new Google Merchant Center. The Merchant Center is replacing Google Base for those who submit products to Google.
Google Blog announced you can now buy YouTube Promoted Video ads directly in the Google AdWords console. Previously, all YouTube Promoted Video ads were managed on YouTube at ads.youtube.com.
Google has acquired AdMob (www.admob.com), a popular mobile display ad company, for $750 million. This acquisition gives Google access to AdMob’s more than 15,000 mobile Web sites and applications.
Google has announced a new lab-type area called Google Ad Innovations, which is where it’ll “show you some of our latest ideas around advertising technologies and get your feedback.” Think of it as Google Labs for Ads.
Google has enabled access to the AdWords dashboard and other features for smartphone users. It’s configurable and provides on-the-go access to account data and stats. The new mobile interface is currently available for iPhone, Android and Palm/WebOS users.
Google starts testing a feature with a small number of advertisers in which a phone number can be included within the ad to help them more effectively engage with customers who prefer to connect over the phone.
A new keyword type, broad match modifier, begins testing.
Google Product Listing Ads are offered to all advertisers
Google is now letting AdWords advertisers automatically optimize what ads display most based on conversion rates.
Google will begin charging $1.00 for calls completed using the unique number it provisions, but solely when the call originates from someone using a computer who dials the number themselves from a phone. When the call is from a mobile device, or someone on a PC calls from the computer itself by clicking, the standard click charges apply. Previously, the calls dialed on a phone were free, as they didn’t involve a click, per se.
Google rolls out the ability to target ads to users by interest based on their previous browsing activity, or behavior, to all of its advertisers.
Cost per lead tests start. Google is testing search and display versions of a cost-per-lead ad format that would allow users to request an advertiser contact them.
Google is opening wider a beta test of Dynamic Search Ads. This ad type is designed for retailers or other advertisers with a large, often-changing inventory. Google automatically generates ad copy, based on the advertiser’s template.
Google officially announced it would begin serving AdWords at the bottom of search engine results pages on Google.com.
Google Product Search is renamed to Google Shopping and only merchants that paid will be listed.
Google is testing the effect of adding “Trusted Stores” badges to qualifying advertisers’ search ads, as it considers deploying the badges more widely.
Google introduced the ability to target more than 30,000 ZIP codes in AdWords, giving advertisers the ability to find potential customers in a familiar, granular way. Another new feature, Location Insertion, is aimed at letting advertisers with multiple locations create one ad, and have information dynamically inserted depending on the user’s query or location.
Google released a new report — Auction Insights — that helps marketers understand how their ads stand, compared to others in the same auctions.
Testing begins for a new ad format on its Hotel Finder product that lets marketers bid to appear at the top of search results. Promoted Hotels ads are ranked based on a combination of bid and quality score, and are sold on a CPC basis.
The remarketing tag gets a makeover.
Google has begun notifying merchants that it won’t allow them to continue listing weapons-related items for sale in Google Shopping.
Google announced plans to add enhanced campaigns for AdWords to aid with campaign management catered to multiple-device users. The enhanced campaigns aimed to include advanced reports about users. This move was controversial among advertisers.
Ad group-level mobile bid adjustments started to roll out.
The AdWords Keyword Planner finally launches.
Google has announced the official beta for Image Extensions in AdWords.
Google announced the beta release of Review Extensions which allows advertisers to append a quote of endorsement from a reputable publication in their AdWords ads.
CNBC reports that Google is now banning porn businesses from utilizing their ad network.
To help retailers maintain consistent visibility in PLAs, Google has launched “automatic item updates” in AdWords.
Google announced it is extending its popular product listing ads (PLAs) to retail and e-commerce sites across the Google Search Network. The ads are served via a new Google product called AdSense for Shopping.
Automated Extensions report starts rolling out.
AdWords 11 is launched. Google released a fully-redesigned version of AdWords Editor that supports several of the bulk editing features that have recently been added to the web interface and introduces new functionality to the desktop tool.
By 2015 Google maintained nearly 64 percent of search share on desktop and almost 90 percent of mobile in the US.
The Google shared library is sunsetted.
Google launches dynamic structured snippets for AdWords. The automated extensions display industry-specific, structured information about products and services on advertisers’ sites.
Google has opened up access to its home services ad program in AdWords Express. The home services ad program launched in beta in the San Francisco area to connect service providers with local residents searching for help.
Starting in October, Google changed the conversions columns to include only those conversions that are set for optimization: i.e., optimized conversion actions.
Google launched Smart Goals in early December. Smart Goals are designed for advertisers that don’t or can’t have conversion tracking on their sites. It aggregates conversion data from the thousands of sites that opt to share data with Google Analytics and, with machine learning, identifies visits deemed most likely to convert on the advertiser’s site.
The post Google Ads turns 22: A look back at the biggest changes and advances in search appeared first on Search Engine Land.
Meta is introducing new ways for brands to discover whether other accounts use their intellectual property (IP) on Facebook and Instagram.
The post Meta Lets Brands Search Facebook & Instagram For Stolen Content appeared first on Search Engine Journal.
People search a lot about “marketing skills.”
Google Trends shows the upward graph of the above term from January 2016, but its search has dramatically increased in 2022.
This increase leads to the conclusion that more people are looking to enhance their marketing skills. But, one skill remains underrated, despite being included in most online articles and books related to digital marketing skills.
Curiosity.
It’s underrated because some marketers emphasize working on other skills they feel will make them progress in their careers and land them their dream jobs and higher paychecks.
Thus, they’ll work on technical, analytical and communication skills, but not on being more curious.
Kids are the most curious. They ask questions about anything and everything, and that’s how they know things better and remember for a more extended period.
Consider the Information Theory curve below. What I interpret is the more curiosity you have, the more knowledge you can get (the original interpretation is not in this context).
With more knowledge, the understanding improves and takes you to the next growth stage.
That’s how it becomes crucial for everyone, even marketers, to be extremely curious to compel us to:
Curiosity is one of the most important drivers of creativity. After all, that drives us to explore new things, ask questions and look for answers.
Marketers need to be curious if they want to be creative.
We often get caught up in the day-to-day tasks that we forget to step back and question everything we’re doing.
We become complacent and go through the motions without thinking about our actions or why.
But when we take the time to be curious, we can open up a new world of possibilities.
We can look at our campaigns from different angles and develop innovative ways to improve them. We can also challenge the status quo and find better ways to do things.
When marketers become curious, they would ask more questions.
The more questions, the more understanding.
The more understanding, the better ideas, and solutions.
Because they ask many questions, bringing creativity in them, marketers become enthusiastic about everything they’re working on.
Let’s take a look at the Zone of Curiosity.
I have highlighted the Zone of Curiosity section within the above diagram, which says that when someone is in the curiosity state, the efficiency is at the optimum level. Hence, the interest and excitement are pretty high.
This interest and excitement can be contagious, sparking the same curiosity and enthusiasm in others.
Such a feeling can bring them together for more experiments, learning, and growth. This can lead to more sales, customers, and success for the business overall.
I would like to refer to the same Zone of Curiosity diagram above says that alertness is also high when someone is in a curious state of mind.
When we’re curious about something, we’re more likely to pay attention to it and note details we might have missed. This heightened focus can benefit marketers by allowing us to target our audience more precisely.
After all, your efforts will likely be in vain if you’re not reaching the right people with the right message. Fortunately, curiosity can help to strengthen precision among marketers.
Now that we know what curiosity delivers to marketers, we need to look at where and how curiosity helps marketers in their day-to-day marketing lives.
Let’s start with the basics and then with the advanced ones.
The number one area where marketers need curiosity is to learn new things. We are so busy in marketing jobs that we just keep doing what we learned in the past.
Though we have Google products that keep us on our toes to learn new things, how successful are we in learning them?
For example, Google announced the sunsetting of Universal Analytics (UA), and we have to move to GA4.
I interviewed a lot of SEOs (seniors and managers) in the past three months, and no one has tried anything there. Most of them know this news, while only a few have set it up.
This shows a lack of curiosity among SEOs to learn new things like GA4.
Seniors and managers who are hiring embrace the talent that learns new things as, most of the time, they are looking to fill the skill gaps, and if you know it, you’ll be preferred.
So, knowing is not enough for a marketer. Learning is more essential.
Be curious to learn more new things.
Whenever someone asks me about experiments I did, the first one I recollect is when I earned my first featured snippet.
It was 2015 when for the first time, I optimized the content before I published it. And within a week, it was on the featured snippets.
Because it’s on the featured snippets, obviously, it satisfied the users’ search and reading intent.
That content got promoted by our competitors, and not just my reporting manager but the owner of the 300-people company appreciated me over an email.
Today, the SEO industry knows me as someone who strategizes, curates, and optimizes content for featured snippets.
My curiosity to experiment with something new helped me reach where I am today.
It could be something else for you. But, it’s vital for you as a marketer to always be curious to experiment.
Experimenting is not enough. You also need to know what worked. What’s more important is to learn why an experiment was successful.
For one of our niche clients in social media marketing, we tried everything from choosing different audiences to coming out with short, lengthy videos. But none of our posts went to more than 30 likes and 500 reach.
But, the moment we launched our first reel, it went viral.
After digging into why most of our posts didn’t go that viral and most of our reels are getting good reach, it meant our target audience embraced reels, and Instagram prioritized them.
A smart marketer must always be curious to know what works for each client and what not to multiply the effort in the right direction.
With failures, I mean larger failures, such as:
While we had a lot of success stories around featured snippets, we have one client for whom we could not achieve them. We knew the biggest challenge was their user experience. Nothing was dynamic that we could change the page structure, title, H1, and more.
Another failure was losing one of the biggest clients last year.
We recommended many tech improvements, which they never prioritized, but because Missive Digital was new, we provided them with content writing services to prove our SEO worth.
The content we wrote is still ranking on Page 1, and the content strategy we prepared was utilized even after our association with them.
They knew our worth, but we still lost them due to their lack of implementation.
Failures will be there, and they’ll never be in your control. Be curious to identify what brought you the failure and take the necessary steps.
Though failure and mistake are the results of trying, they are different.
You may not make mistakes because of failures, but you may fail because of mistakes.
I remember an incident that happened a few months ago within my team. I assigned a new team member to optimize the content, and while reviewing her work, I identified that for the target query, another page of the client was ranking on Page 1.
She had spent the whole day optimizing the content, which had keyword cannibalization. That was a mistake, which I mentioned in our Slack group.
Instantly, another team member called me up and asked me what she had to do if such a thing happened to her. I quickly guided her on how it becomes necessary to inform the client first and conclude on which page to optimize for the targeted query based on the users’ search and reading intent.
I appreciated that team member for being curious to learn from her teammate’s mistake.
It’s a great sign of being a good marketer because it lets you avoid future blunders or failures.
Curiosity should not end at learning from failures. Sometimes, knowing what would happen if we fail at certain things is also essential.
As a marketer, we strategize and execute various campaigns. We set key performance indicators (KPIs) for every campaign. But we hardly think about what we should do if the KPIs go negative.
What if our campaign doesn’t work as expected? What would be the implications of that?
Some projects are do-or-die situations where business owners or marketing heads have significantly less patience and time when working with agencies, consultants, or freelancers. You can lose the trust of your clients and projects in the long run.
In such cases, be curious enough to ask peers or managers about the implications of the failures during the planning stage.
With such curiosity, you know when to change the plan if a campaign doesn’t perform in two weeks or two months.
Even if such curiosity doesn’t save you from losing the project, but will help you plan better for the next one.
Don’t get me wrong here. I know all of our marketing strategies involve thorough competitive analysis. But, most of the time, we stick to analyzing competitors based on the services you’re providing.
For example, if we provide content writing services, we stick to just that and don’t recommend anything that might help your content perform.
Sometimes, you also need to keep an eye on whether your competitors are:
Everything that your competitors do, you should know it. We have made Google Alerts for our competitors’ brand mentions and configured them in our SEO tools.
That helps you be curious about your competitors and proactive in making decisions on time.
No, I’m not talking about the latest news in your industry. Today, everyone has subscribed to more than two or three newsletters where they get the latest updates on the industry.
I’m talking about what other marketers are talking about, learning new things, experimenting, and more in the industry.
For example, in SEO, many people I know are learning automation through Python, using Streamlit. I learned about Python SEO through the knowledge base of the late Hamlet Batista.
I remember Orit Mutznik (one of my inspirations) started a Python course and even came up with her first script.
Then I see a lot of posts from semantic SEO from Koray Tuğberk GÜBÜR (it’s on my list).
No one can stop your progress when you know what strategies, processes, methods, and tools people use to improve our client’s marketing ROI.
Most marketers love what more prominent brands do in their marketing. They would post some tweets or carousels dedicated to the great branding done by the brands.
But only a few marketers analyze what is and isn't working for some brands.
For example, Luke Carthy (one of my favorite ecommerce SEOs) is curious to understand what is happening with the brands, what's working, and what's not. He recently devised a case study for Toys ‘R’ Us. These case studies are just the reviews he does for those websites. He does not work for them.
His curiosity makes him do such reviews and analyses of ecommerce websites.
Such curiosity is rare but is required for every marketer to enhance their approach and mindset toward how to learn from and showcase brands if they're making mistakes.
Whenever you read any article on curiosity online, they give one tip – ask questions.
In marketing, just asking questions won't make you curious. You need to know what to ask, when, and how.
In my opinion, asking questions like the ones below is not considered curiosity:
Just as asking the right questions is mandatory, asking the right person in the right way also matters.
For example, this person tagged John Mueller, Barry Schwartz, Brian Dean, Dr. Pete Meyers, and Fandango for something related to Google Business. That was a completely irrelevant and incorrect way of showcasing curiosity to know from these people.
So curiosity is a skill if you take it seriously, so don't ask random, irrelevant questions to irrelevant people at irrelevant platforms and timings.
As I explained above, curiosity is generated through experiments and not just by asking questions. The way it happened to me - when I achieved my first featured snippet in 2015.
If not from your experiments, learn from others' experiments.
For example, in my BrightonSEO talk on remarketing SEO, I shared an experiment that Brodie Clark (an Australian SEO consultant) did on Twitter.
When he ran the experiment, I participated out of curiosity, and it helped me build this approach of remarketing SEO considering Twitter SEO.
After he shared the results on how Twitter carousel boosts organic impressions and clicks, we started using Twitter as the tool to drive more returning visitors to our website and for faster URL indexing.
So run your experiments or learn from others to enhance your curiosity as a marketing skill.
I would be too direct here. If you are not open to feedback, you cannot grow as a professional or human being.
And feedback can come from anyone – your seniors, managers, boss, juniors, mentors, and more.
Also, feedback can come in any form. For example, I usually ask my team members questions to discover what I want to tell them. In such a way, they feel it isn't feedback but learning.
It doesn't matter who gave you the feedback. See what you're learning from the feedback because that's how curiosity gets strengthened within you.
Before becoming a consultant, I used to work in-house. Back then, hardly all IT or marketing agencies would have weekends off in India.
But, when I worked in Cygnet Infotech (one of the largest IT headquarters in Ahmedabad), weekends were off, and I was enjoying my work-life balance.
Every month, we used to outperform our targets for TestingWhiz, and it was monotonous to keep enjoying the appreciation from the manager and company directors.
So, I knew that if I had to learn more, I had to come out of my comfort zone of this 5-day work.
I decided to leave my five-day working job and went to another IT company for a six-day working culture.
And after that, I moved to entrepreneurship which is almost a seven-day work (even if you’re not at your desk physically doing office work).
You need to identify your comfort zone and leave it at the right time. Otherwise, you won’t be curious about what the other side of your life and job looks like.
Not necessarily someone comes to you for help, considering you know everything. They might think they need someone reliable to work on something they struggle at.
When you agree to help (irrespective of monetary gain), you become more curious about the things you handle.
A few months ago, I was not reading all the blogs Aleyda Solis used to add to her #SEOFOMO newsletter. I used to select the interesting ones, such as content, on-page, algorithm updates, studies, etc.
But since we collaborated to write those descriptions, I now read every blog.
This has increased my level of curiosity for even the tech side of SEO. I read for myself and even for my team.
So when you're passionately involved in helping someone, your mind develops the curiosity to learn everything to help them.
A marketer's job is not only to build curiosity within their target audience but even within themselves to become better every day.
Take the help of peers, thought leaders, mentors, nature, tools, and more because learning is everywhere, and the more curious you become, the more successful you’ll be.
The post You can’t grow as a marketer without curiosity – here’s why appeared first on Search Engine Land.