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Category: SEM

Learn how to use Search Engine Marketing to grow your business in an increasingly competitive marketplace. In our guide, you’ll learn an overview of search engine marketing basics as well as more in-depth SEM topics like ad auctions, keyword planning and conversion tracking.

Why You Should be Using Campaign Experiments for Landing Page Tests

Beyond ad copy, landing page selection also plays a large role in how well your marketing efforts will perform. Anyone can give you their subjective opinion on a landing page, but what use is personal opinion if it isn’t backed up by data? If I were able to tell you with certainty that landing page B will lower your CPA by 10% over landing page A, it shouldn’t really matter which one looks “better” to an observer, right?  This is exactly what you can do with Google Ads campaign experiments. You’re able to split a portion (or even 50/50) of your traffic between landing pages, and learn insights into which landing page is the clear winner. Typically an ad group is set up like so: A few ad variations that point to one landing page. Now you might be wondering why you can’t just duplicate the ads and send them to a second landing page like below: Obviously you can do that, no one is stopping you – but to put it simply: this is a cumbersome and wasteful method that doesn’t result in statistically significant results. Can you imagine duplicating ads across the entire account just to test landing pages? What if you had three you wanted to test; do you want to triple the ads? On top of that there is no way to guarantee a specific amount of traffic is split between landing page #1 and #2 using this approach. With campaign experiments you’re able to isolate tests and diverge a specific percentage of traffic over to landing page #2 without creating an excessive amount of ads within your account. You can even set a specific length of time to run the experiment, giving you multiple ways to control spend when running a test. Why Optimizing for Conversion Rate Only, is Bad Once your experiment is up and running, you are able to quickly compare KPIs such as cost-per-click (CPC), conversion rate (CVR), cost per acquisition (CPA), and many more. Google Ads will actually denote that these changes have statistical significance with a blue asterisk. An example shown below: These are important and necessary to consider when optimizing landing pages correctly. For example, if you were to solely optimize a landing page for conversion rate without any other factors considered, you could still end up with a higher CPA or lower ROI. How can this happen? A higher CPA could be caused by higher CPCs because your new landing page has a lower quality score vs your original page. This means although you are converting at a higher rate, you’re potentially wasting more money since CPA has increased on those ads. This example shows that optimizing for only CVR is missing the true goal, which is to ultimately make more money. Now that you’re well informed, and would like to set your own experiment up, click on the drafts & experiments tab towards the bottom of the menu on the left hand side of the Google Ads UI. Once there, click the + sign to create your first draft. You will need to create a draft before configuring an experiment. I hope this entry encourages you to consider all aspects when testing new landing pages. If you wish to learn more detail on how to set on up for yourself, check out Tim’s blog post here for a step-by-step guide!

Bing Action extension – an extension like none other

Rarely does Bing lead the charge on new features for search. Over the years of working with the main search platforms Google and Bing I’ve noticed that extensions (and really most features) usually rollout on Google then get adopted in Bing a few months later. This blog post is about the exception from that rule. The exception are Bing Action Extensions.  So what are Bing “Action extension” as they are called in the Microsoft Ads platform? These extensions are essentially a way to extend your ad with a prominent element offering your prospect to another action they can take as they engage with your ad. With these extensions you have 70 pre-defined calls to action to choose from. Some are industry-specific, like the ones on the screenshot below: Others are more general CTAs like “Learn More” and such: Here are the examples of how your ads’ would appear on desktops with an Action Extension present: On mobile, Bing Action Extensions show up even nicer. The Action button appears underneath the ad: In addition to displaying somewhat differently depending on the device, Action extensions also offer scheduling functionality. For example, you can deploy your “Directions” Action extension to display during business hours only, or “Chat Now” Action extension during chat support hours. And for the final feature to mention with Bing Action extensions is that you can customize the Final URL where you want the Action extension to land clicks on your ads. Bing Action Extension Bonus: If you advertise internationally, here is a nice file with Action Buttons translated

Google My Business Short Names/URL’s

Google’s been focusing a lot on local businesses lately and one of their newest features supports this notion. They recently unveiled a new feature for Google My Business (GMB) that makes it easier for customers to find your business called Short Names. A Short Name is limited to 32 characters and if you have multiple locations you’ll need to assign a unique Short Name to each one. After establishing your new Short Name, Google automatically creates a URL in the form of g.page/[yourshort-name] which you can easily share with customers so that they can find your GMB profile, view business details, or leave a review. Navigating to the “Home” section on the left panel reveals a “Get more reviews” section with your g.page URL. To setup your own Short Name start by navigating to the GMB listing of your choice and selecting “Info” on the left panel. Under the “@” section, you can assign a Short Name. A search for your Short Name or short URL in Google Maps or Google Search should result in your verified Google My Business listing featuring your reviews, Google Maps address, and other details.  We recommend ACTING FAST before your desired Short Name is taken by another business. When exploring Short Names for my clients, I find that Google prevents you from using nonspecific, irrelevant Short Names and you’ll likely be required you to incorporate characters that distinguish your location. For example, one of my clients couldn’t register their corporate name as their Short Name, even though on search it appears as though nobody else has claimed that Short Name. To remedy this I ended up using their brand name + “-sf” for one location and adding “-california” to another location.Be careful when selecting your short name since you’re only allowed to change it 3 times per year. You can go here for a comprehensive set of rules regarding Short Names. If your desired Short Name is taken by an impersonator or contains fake content you can flag the business  for Google. Since Short Names are globally unique, Google is trying their best to ensure that Short Names aren’t confusing or misleading to searchers around the world. We look forward to continuously improving performance for our clients with physical storefronts and GMB has been a free, proven way to increase awareness. Short Names are an easy, new way to request those important customer reviews and show off your Google My Business profile since the URL is simplified and less intimidating for customers to recall. Reviews are low hanging fruit that can exponentially boost your brand, but following up with clients can be difficult. We’ll keep you updated with the latest news and features for GMB. Happy marketing! *For Yelp, we do not encourage you to reach out for reviews as this is strictly forbidden by Yelp’s review policy. Rather, have ample signage on your business that says ‘Find us on Yelp’ and let people organically review your business. You should still reply to ALL reviews good and bad to show you’re grateful for feedback.