While Google’s newest campaign type, Performance Max (PMax), is devoid of keyword data,  some new information may help advertisers better steer their efforts with the product.

PMax campaigns are unique to all other campaign types as no keywords are required and no keyword data is delivered to advertisers. The closest existing campaign type is the fully automated shopping-only product, “Smart Shopping” which will be shuttered in July.

The big difference between the two is that Performance Max campaigns can run without a product feed and can also include local ad elements. 

Those PMax campaigns without a feed or local inputs can gain inventory on Google search by simply inputting a website or pages into the campaign. Due to the fully automated nature of the campaign, Google will then choose keywords to show on Google Search as well as other placements on Gmail/YouTube/Display/Discover. 

Performance Max matching in search

Many advertisers rightfully want to know what this means for their existing search campaigns, many of which have had keywords painstakingly pruned for optimal performance.

Google has stated multiple times that Performance Max campaigns on Google Search will not take traffic away from existing eligible keywords that are “identical” to a user’s query.

If the query is identical to an eligible Search keyword of any match type, the Search campaign will be prioritized over PMax. If the query is not identical to a keyword, the campaign/ad with the highest Ad Rank (e.g. most relevant creative, landing page) will be prioritized.

— AdsLiaison (@adsliaison) May 10, 2022

If you have a keyword in your campaign in any format (broad, phrase or exact match) that identically matches the user’s query and is eligible (has a high enough quality score/bid/budget/AdRank to show) then the existing campaign will trump Performance Max campaigns.

However, many advertisers aren’t buying it.

Google: PMax won’t cannibalize existing campaigns

At a recent Friends of Search event, Rodney Ip, Global Product Lead, Google Ads, Google, stated that “when you see brand traffic in PMax it’s not cannibalization, it’s likely that your standard brand campaign is capped or maxed out and PMax is stepping in to deliver more brand traffic.” according to Mike Ryan of Smarter Ecommerce:

Rodney Ip from @google

He says when you see brand traffic in PMax it’s not cannibalization, it’s likely that your standard brand campaign is capped or maxed out and PMax is stepping in to deliver more brand traffic.#ppcchat #FOS22 #FOS2022 pic.twitter.com/vHDcyZ2T2z

— Mike Ryan (@mikeryanretail) June 14, 2022

The responses to that statement painted a much different picture.

Most of the advertisers strongly disagreed with the statement and a healthy dialog ensued. A comment from Colin Slattery brought up competing data points to Ip’s statement.

So why does volume from branded campaigns drop when performance max launches?

— Collin Slattery (@CJSlattery) June 14, 2022

This should not be the case if users have the corresponding “identical keyword” in a search campaign, according to Google Ads Product Liaison Ginny Marvin:

Bumping this up here: If you have the identical keyword in your Search campaign, Search will always be prioritized over Performance Max as long as the keyword is eligible to serve (campaign isn’t limited by budget, targeting aligns). https://t.co/CueEI5eiSo

— AdsLiaison (@adsliaison) June 21, 2022

What exactly are ‘identically matching’ terms?

So what is an “identical keyword”? Marvin gave a surprising answer: 

“Identical means the keyword is the exact same or spell-corrected. When there is not an exact match to the user query, prioritization is based on Ad Rank to determine which campaign is predicted to deliver the most relevant ad & best ROI.”

Identical means the keyword is the exact same or spell-corrected. When there is not an exact match to the user query, prioritization is based on Ad Rank to determine which campaign is predicted to deliver the most relevant ad & best ROI.

— AdsLiaison (@adsliaison) June 21, 2022

Recapping, an identical keyword is now defined as:

1. Independent of match type (broad/phrase/exact).
2. Is a term where the search query is the “exact-same” as keyword existing within an advertiser’s campaign.
3. Spell-corrected keywords/search terms.

In order to keep the wide reach of a Performance Max campaign from cannibalizing other campaigns, one simply needs to ensure that they have the desired “identical keyword” in their campaigns (in and match type) as long as it is eligible to serve.

Does this fundamentally go against Google’s best practices?

For years now, paid search advertisers have moved away from a massive number of iterations of search queries as matching has gotten looser (and smarter) in Google Ads.

Close variants and smarter machine learning has allowed advertisers to have greater success using fewer keywords (in most cases). 

With the need to now have an “identical keyword” in a campaign, the astute question arose: Do these recommendations of ensuring all identical keywords are in an account go against what Google has been preaching for years now?

This would go against the "remove redundant keywords" if that is the case. The issue would be any term that was not exactly what the user searched could end up in the PM campaign. Depending on how strict they are.

— Lawrence Chasse (@lchasse) June 21, 2022

In order to keep PMax from stealing traffic from other campaigns, said campaigns should now protect their reach by building out in-depth lists of all possible identical keywords.

For example, an eligible phrase match search query in a search campaign like “Nike Sneakers” that would normally match to “buy nike sneakers” may now lose that traffic to a Performance Max campaign as the keyword is not “identical” to the query.

In order to be protected from PMax stealing that traffic, Nike would need to include the term “buy nike sneakers” in their campaigns in order to have an identical keyword.

What this means for you

We know that an exact match keyword doesn’t match to a query exactly.

We now know that an ”identical keyword” is a “match-type less” keyword that must exactly match the user query or be a keyword that shows a misspelling.

Honestly, this is quite confusing to explain to clients or other departments. But it is quite necessary if running PMax campaigns. 

If you are testing out PMax campaigns, in order to protect your other campaigns, you may now find yourself circa 2010 working on adding as many possible iterations and variations to build out “identical keywords” in your search accounts.

With PMax not providing any keyword data to advertisers, this effort may be a painstaking – but fruitful. 

If you have a good Google Ads rep, they may be able to put negative keywords into a Performance Max campaign for you to help guide the system in a different format.

However, this feature isn’t built into campaigns for advertisers. You need a special exception.

The post What are Identical Keywords and why they matter for Google Ads appeared first on Search Engine Land.

a message brought to you by Wayne Vass SEO

This article first appeared on: The post %%POSTLINK%% appeared first on %%BLOGLINK%%.

After your technical, content and outreach strategies are in place, you should be well on your way to digital marketing success. 

At this stage, you should have optimized your website for a strong page experience, created lots of entity-driven content, and gained inbound links providing you with rankings and traffic.

Now, you’ll need to empower your team with the right data to help you continue to grow and shape your digital marketing strategy.

Setting up your dashboards

Fortunately, a myriad of tools can help organize the data you need to keep your traffic growing.

Here are some data points you can look at:

• Overall KPIs: Are your site’s sessions, impressions, clicks and conversions trending up or down?
• Keywords ranking: How many keywords are ranking in the top 1-3, 4-10, 11-20, or in the top 100 of Google? What keywords are gaining or losing traction? What is the estimated traffic cost of these keywords? What keywords are seeing the most volume and conversions?
• Pages trending up/down: What pages have a high volume of traffic? What pages are losing traffic? These pages can be optimized and expanded to add more optimized content and internal links.
• Striking distance keywords: What keywords are in the top 20? Once you identify these, consider adding internal and external links to those pages and perform on-page SEO to push those keywords higher in the SERPs.
• Content optimizations: What content can you add to pages trending up or down? Type the target keyword for the page, and use questions from Google’s People Also Ask box to enhance your content.
• Audience demographics: Google Analytics includes a plethora of audience reports, including age, gender, interests, geographical targeting, devices and more. Use this data to build your persona profiles and target keywords for each persona and buying stage.
• Attribution: This reflects the buyer’s journey. Understanding where consumers come from, what pages they visit, and where they go after leaving your site can help you improve the user experience.
  

Optimization experiments

It’s important to look at your data and develop actionable plans based on your findings.

Some ways to use your data:

• Optimize articles trending down by doing better on-page SEO or adding more semantically related content.
• Build internal and external links to pages and/or keywords that are trending up or down.
• Write more content for a specific target persona and buying stage.
• Focus your efforts on channels and partnerships that are yielding traffic and referrals.

Every time you update a page, create new content or add links, you should create an annotation to determine if the changes made resulted in positive growth.   

If you continue producing content and building links without checking your analytics and data, you may waste valuable time and resources.

---

---

Conversion rate optimization (CRO)

Now you have all this wonderful traffic coming to you, how do you improve your conversion rate and turn more visitors into customers?

The ideal way is to do A/B testing and conversion rate optimization. 

You’ll need to set up software that will give users two variants of your site. You can then track to see which cohort had better conversions.

Various tools will help you conduct this research:

• FigPii
• Heap.io
• Hotjar
• VWO

Ensure you continuously run tests and update your landing pages and articles. If users have a good experience on your site, this will have a positive impact on your SEO.

Monitor trends

Just when you feel you have a grasp on your strategy, Google releases an algorithm update that creates upheaval in your traffic and rankings.

Monitoring trends will help you stay compliant and within Google’s best practice guidelines.

Some trends you can look out for:  

• Focus on voice and question-based queries. As smart devices advance, such as watches, glasses, and wearables, interactions with the search engine may increasingly occur via voice. You should always be using questions as keywords and optimizing for voice search.
• Emphasis on quality over quantity. Based on crawl prioritization. Produce fewer pieces of content, but ensure those pieces provide the best possible user experience. Promote your articles to build links as often as you publish so that your link growth velocity is congruent with your content publishing ratio.
• Optimize for entities, not keywords. As Google’s understanding of natural language processing improves and their machine-learning algorithms become increasingly sophisticated, they can understand pages for meaning, not just keywords. The days of optimizing pages for a single query are over. Instead, we are seeing an emphasis on building pages around topics and including variants of the topic.  
• Emphasis on user engagement signals, especially speed. Google introduced Core Web Vitals to break down the elements of site load speed, from “How Quickly a Page Loads” to “How quickly do users see the first thing on the page”? How Quickly is the page interactive? How quickly is the page fully functional?
• Indexing and crawling prioritization. The number of pages indexed grows exponentially and Google is moving away from indexing everything, to indexing quality content. They are prioritizing crawls to pages that are trusted and authoritative.
• Link building. Following their overall shift towards authority, it’ll become increasingly important to receive mentions from media and trusted sources. If your friends all say you’re the best chef, everyone knows this can be biased. However, if people that don’t know you say you’re the best chef, this has more weight and value. Focus especially on gaining authoritative links that your competitors don’t already have. 

Tracking your site’s metrics, KPIs and trends in search will help you continuously revamp and update your SEO strategy.

It’s the only way to stay relevant and current.

Make sure you build dashboards that allow you to check the performance of your campaigns and react quickly to changes in your site’s performance.

The post How to empower your SEO and digital marketing strategy with data appeared first on Search Engine Land.

a message brought to you by Wayne Vass SEO

This article first appeared on: The post %%POSTLINK%% appeared first on %%BLOGLINK%%.

Causes of friction between SEO and PPC often occur because we tend to use different sources of truth for each channel and build silos of communication between teams.

The main core areas of friction? Usually:

• Reporting 
• Landing pages
• Budget

Here are five ways you can get your PPC and SEO campaigns working together.

Tip 1: Collaborate on first-party data readiness

All digital marketing campaigns need to account for first-party data.

Understanding whether your brand is compliant requires input from both your SEO and PPC teams. 

If you rely heavily on remarketing campaigns (either because you’re in an expensive industry or the customer journey naturally takes multiple steps), you may find yourself increasingly reliant on native audiences.

While some of these audiences can be powerful, most of them underperform against audiences based on brand-tracked activity. 

Analytics audience segments can be a powerful way around fluctuating quality.

These audience segments still require consent and the new global site tag. Make sure your tag is updated to GA4. 

As you set up cookie consent, it’s important that the module follows cumulative layout shift (CLS) rules. As a general rule, modules on the bottom of the page tend to do better as they don’t distract from the user’s purchasing journey, and carry less CLS risk. 

Make sure that first-party data collected is protected (either hashed and synced through tools, or immediately deleted once it’s been uploaded into ad accounts).

Collaborate with your SEO team’s content campaigns to ensure there are engaging hooks to create consensual conversations.  

A final note about analytics

One big drawback in the current roll-out of GA4 and conversion modeling is that advertisers need to choose between using analytics as their source of truth versus harnessing the power of enhanced conversions.

Enhanced conversions require using native Google conversion tracking. While enhanced conversion tracking will give you a better idea of what paid campaigns are doing, the numbers will always be off from what your SEO team reports.

In the interest of trust and data continuity, it may make sense to take the “hit” on PPC-reported numbers so long as the overall metrics point to positive ROAS.

Going with enhanced conversions means being ok that reports will be different and all parties need to be ok with that. 

Tip 2: Acknowledge and adapt based on domain structure choices

There are three ways to set up brand URLs:

• One domain for everything (including international).
• Subdomains for various initiatives.
• Vanity domains and country domains.

Regardless of what path you take, PPC-specific pages need to be noindex/nofollow and allow for the adbot to access them so they can contribute to quality score. 

It’s rare that non-ecommerce brands will be served better by keeping everything on the same domain. That’s because there are strategic elements of a well SEO’d site that can run counter to PPC:

• SEO doesn’t want duplicate content, and PPC benefits from testing templates.
• SEO benefits from a robust navigation bar, while PPC does better with limited choices for user action.
• SEO might need to redirect a page, which will cause the ad to get disapproved (three strikes in a 90-day period causes the ad account to get suspended).

These pitfalls are easily mitigated by having subdomains that can still benefit the main domain, without forcing creative or technical compromises between the SEO and PPC teams.

Additionally, a subdomain will allow you to keep the same analytics property and branding continuity.

If you are forced to use the same landing page for PPC and organic traffic, make sure that any redirects are communicated at least three to five days before it will happen. This will give the PPC team time to adjust the creative so you’re not wasting money sending traffic to a broken page until Google disapproves the ad. 

Conveying inventory is also really important for both PPC and SEO.

If your product is constantly out of stock, it will eventually get penalized by the search engines. Make sure all campaigns are made aware of inventory issues so they can exclude products from paid campaigns, as well as apply the out-of-stock schema to the organic page.   

Tip 3: Bring transactional intent & CRO to all pages

SEO often gets unfairly pigeonholed as the “research” channel, while PPC is often accountable exclusively for transactions.

While there are some valid reasons to think about traffic in that way, there are lessons in building trust and enabling transactions each can learn from the other. 

For example, while it’s true that PPC pages lean towards less content, there still needs to be options to understand the product/service. This content (written or in video format) should be below the fold, keeping the path to conversion clear.

On a similar note, SEO requires rich and authoritative content to rank well. Yet if the path to conversion is buried (or not there at all), the traffic will be all fluff. 

On first pass, you’d think this was a well-crafted page on the organic site. Yet this was actually a special PPC version of the page. 

Ironically, the SEO version of the page has clearer paths to conversion. If you’re going to take the time to make a PPC page, make sure it honors the rules of PPC. 

This page gives the user enough context to know what they’re getting into as well as clear paths to conversion.

If the user wants more info, they can get it, but aren’t overwhelmed. They are also given the option to fill out a multi-step form that builds engagement with the brand.

The organic site is just as clean and easy to navigate as the paid variant. The CTAs are easy to identify and the path to conversion remains uninterrupted. 

Tip 4: Use search query reports to inform campaigns

One of the best ways to get PPC and SEO working together is data sharing on search queries.

You’re already paying for the search data from the search terms report. Sharing that data, along with what’s converting and what’s not will help content teams know where to invest. 

Yet an easily missed opportunity is sharing the search terms from in-site search and search console.

Understanding what existing customers want and how they think will help prioritize keyword variants. 

Both channels should be sharing search term data so brands are able to get insights on the viability of content and auction prices. 

Set up automatic report sharing on at least a quarterly basis so all digital channels are talking to each other. 

Tip 5: Build in time to talk to each other 

This may seem like a silly and trite suggestion, but the amount of good that can come from getting face time with your counterpart is immeasurable.

Whether it’s a 10-15 minute connect at the beginning of the week or a monthly collaboration session, taking the time to connect on the innovations and challenges in each domain will ensure the other can be prepared to mitigate or enhance.

If you’re an agency and your counterpart works for another agency, ask for joint meetings with the client or separately.

Showing your commitment to the brand’s success and collaborative attitude will go miles for client retention and ensure your great work isn’t accidentally countered. 

PPC and SEO don’t need to be at odds

Overcome the friction through collaboration and owning where one can mitigate weaknesses and amplify profit. 

The post 5 ways to get PPC and SEO working together appeared first on Search Engine Land.

a message brought to you by Wayne Vass SEO

This article first appeared on: The post %%POSTLINK%% appeared first on %%BLOGLINK%%.

As digital marketers face a rapidly growing market and higher competition, the structure and effectiveness of paid advertising campaigns become more complex. Optimization, visibility and improving processes matter now more than ever.

But, it can be easy to lose visibility over what needs to be done and how those campaigns perform. This can lead to subpar results and a lack of understanding of how to improve your next campaigns. 

In this informative SMX Advanced session, Nadiia Sharipova from Wrike, now part of Citrix, addresses three keys to digital marketing transformation:

1. Why optimization and visibility matter
2. How to reduce your competition in key areas
3. Critical processes that help improve CRO

Join the session to learn better visibility and workflow for your search engine initiatives, how companies like Hootsuite optimized their workflows to reduce complexity and the essential tools and strategies you need to do your best work. 

After watching the presentation, you’ll be able to:

• Identify pitfalls negatively impacting your search campaigns 
• Discover solutions for establishing better visibility over assets and results 
• Streamline SEM/PPC campaign workflows and optimize collaboration

The post Processes, visibility and optimization: The keys to digital marketing transformation appeared first on Search Engine Land.

a message brought to you by Wayne Vass SEO

This article first appeared on: The post %%POSTLINK%% appeared first on %%BLOGLINK%%.

Web analytics company SimilarWeb acquired rank tracking and monitoring tool Rank Ranger last month. Terms of the deal, announced on May 16, were not revealed. 

I recently had a chance to conduct a Q&A with SimilarWeb VP, GM Digital Marketing Solutions Baruch Toledano, as well as Rank Ranger CEO and founder Shay Harel. 

Toledano and Harel discussed what the acquisition means for both companies and their customers. They also discuss some of the biggest challenges and opportunities in SEO right now. Here are the highlights. 

SimilarWeb

The company, founded in 2007, has more than 1,000 employees. It also has more than 2,500 customers around the world, from startups to Fortune 500 companies, including Adidas, Adobe, Booking.com, DHL, Google, MGM and Pepsico.

According to Toledano, SimilarWeb’s mission is to:

• “Empower digital growth by providing decision-makers at all levels with 360° visibility into the digital world. We provide granular insights for any website, mobile app, industry and market globally.”

Why did SimilarWeb acquire RankRanger? Toledano said:

• “Rank Ranger provides SEO managers with search term tracking and monitoring. The fidelity of their data and ability to identify ongoing SERP changes has been instrumental to many organic search marketers. We believe that by combining SimilarWeb traffic analysis features and our datasets with ongoing rank performance, SEO managers will have a complete set of insights to design, measure, report and improve their marketing campaigns.  From planning to on-going monitoring to actionable insights to improving rank positioning.”

This acquisition provides many SimilarWeb customers with a comprehensive view into their business decisions, Toledano said.

• “For marketers, this means tying campaign strategy research activities with ongoing performance and improvements.  It means expanded topic ideation and tracking of content visibility on search. For other roles leveraging our solution, it provides additional reporting granularity, allowing for close monitoring of companies, products, investments, compliance and competitive insights. For example, consideration for potential and ongoing investments and their digital competitors’ presence; Brand and their affiliates’ compliance and monitoring for marketing the brand’s products; close inspection of trends as they emerge in search or other channels and many other use cases.”

What is Toledano’s favorite thing about Rank Ranger?

• “By far, the ranking granularity and all associated reports. Also, I like the fidelity they have for some of the unique engines like Google For Jobs that allows marketers to optimize across specialty search sites.”

This was the second acquisition for SimilarWeb within six months. In November, SimilarWeb acquired Embee Mobile, a mobile insights provider. That acquisition was meant to strengthen its mobile app intelligence offering.

Rank Ranger

The company, founded in 2009, has “hundreds” of customers (the company declined to be more specific), including H&M, Reckitt and Motley Fool.

All of Rank Ranger’s employees (more than a dozen developers and SEO specialists) now work out of SimilarWeb’s Tel Aviv office. All that has really changed is that Rank Ranger is now a SimilarWeb-owned company.

Harel views SimilarWeb as a complementary software to Rank Ranger, which allows for new opportunities to develop new SEO tools and analytics (e.g., traffic analysis, competitor intelligence, advanced reporting).

Here’s how Harel summed up what Rank Ranger does:

• “Rank Ranger is an all-in-one SEO and digital marketing tool designed to give businesses a strategic advantage through advanced reporting and analytics.”

For many startups, the goal is to get acquired. But that was never the goal for Rank Ranger, Harel said: 

• “We have worked closely with SimilarWeb over the past few years, and the synergies were a fit, and at some point, we saw a great opportunity.”

I asked Harel what he remembered most about the early days of the company. At the time, SEO was still in its early stages and there was a growing demand from marketers for tools that helped them perform daily and monthly tasks: 

• “It was very exciting to work with digital marketing agencies, understand their needs and build tools for our early clients that could help them with automation of their daily workflows. The SEO space has been evolving so quickly every year and we had to adapt and constantly innovate with new metrics and insights to keep up with the rapid pace of change.”

Harel also shared a couple of highlights from his time at Rank Ranger: 

• “On the technical side, our Insight Graph innovation has become a best-in-class reporting tool, having a blend of sources all-in-one marketing report. As for the business, the most exciting moment in the early days was when we closed Booking.com as a customer in a short timeframe. It was a challenging case of a custom solution where we excelled in our efforts to come up with a solution, which led to a new offering concept and many new businesses resulting from that use case.”

So what is Harel’s favorite thing about SimilarWeb?

• “Without a doubt, the keyword freshness and database is amazing and very different from “our” SEO world. Normal SEO tools are building keyword datasets based on Keyword Planner, Google Suggest/Related, Search Console, etc. These tools, by nature, have so much noise, it’s like an ocean that you need to invest so much time on research to get value. With SimilarWeb’s clickstream data, you get a clean dataset that is also up to date, that can be segmented from a very different angle. I believe that in the coming years, it will become the best common practice used by SEOs.”

The biggest SEO challenges and opportunities right now

According to Toldedano:

• “Aligning and telling this story in the design of every marketing campaign is their biggest challenge but also presents the biggest opportunity.  In addition, bringing other corporate roles outside of marketing to benefit from SEO insights, can drive better business decisions and promote its prominence in the organization.”

He added that challenges are opportunities where SEO can become a pivotal role within the marketing team:

• “SEOs can help align cross-channel marketing activities to deliver the most impact with other marketing roles combining paid and organic activities.  SEOs can empower CMOs with relevant insights when crafting mixed marketing strategies, particularly for the mid and long-term traffic and brand awareness goals.

Because SEO sits at the junction between creative, analytical and technical disciplines of marketing, it provides the best representation of the voice of customers and what it means to each of these disciplines, Toldedano said.  

• “To drive stronger alignment of marketing campaigns activities, the customer needs and expressions on organic search are the most genuine and long-lasting form of marketing that typically deliver the most impactful result.”  

Keeping up with Google is the biggest challenge, according to Harel. More specifically, changes to SERP features and the display of organic results.

• “These changes are creating new opportunities and invite more competition on keywords and obviously demotes monopolies on certain keyword spaces. For example, in 2015 there were 10 organic results and one Featured Snippet = a total of 11 domains competing. Today you have 10 organic results, a block of related questions, a featured snippet and new boxes that can take the number of domains to 20 and more! That’s a lot of competition on a single keyword.”

The post SimilarWeb & Rank Ranger talk acquisition, SEO challenges, opportunities appeared first on Search Engine Land.

a message brought to you by Wayne Vass SEO

This article first appeared on: The post %%POSTLINK%% appeared first on %%BLOGLINK%%.

1 out of 4 people in the U.S. lives with some type of disability. Because consumers are online now more than in previous years, your clients’ websites must be accessible to everyone.

It’s not merely a matter of being compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG). It’s also good business—because web accessibility can deliver better results and enhance search engine optimization.

Join a panel of agency, compliance and disability leaders to hear more about how web accessibility can work for your agency and your clients.

Register today for “Agencies: Grow Revenue Streams Through Web Accessibility & Compliance,” presented by accessiBe.

The post Webinar: Grow revenue streams through web accessibility and compliance appeared first on Search Engine Land.

a message brought to you by Wayne Vass SEO

This article first appeared on: The post %%POSTLINK%% appeared first on %%BLOGLINK%%.

The post 2 weeks until the 2022 Search Engine Land Awards Early Bird Deadline… enter now! appeared first on Search Engine Land.

a message brought to you by Wayne Vass SEO

This article first appeared on: The post %%POSTLINK%% appeared first on %%BLOGLINK%%.

Facebook is testing a new sidebar that helps users find groups quicker and easier. The sidebar lists your groups and their latest activity like posts or chats. You can also pin your favorite groups so you can access them quicker, and even create your own.

The case for groups. Facebook groups aren’t new. Groups are used to get users with similar interests, and hobbies together, in a place where they can collaborate, communicate, sell, or meet in person. This reorganization doesn’t change the functionality of groups or how they work, but reorganizes them within the Facebook platform and offers a few new features.

How groups are organized. In the new sidebar, you’ll be able to easily see a menu that takes you to links for events, shops, chats, or other channels within the group. 

Within their groups, admins can create individual channels to allow smaller, more casual interactions. This is meant to drive deeper discussions and organize the group around sub-topics of interests and demographics. 

New group features

Community chat. Message and collaborate with other group members in private, smaller channels based on a sub-topic or interest.

Community audio. This allows admins and members to hold audio conversations in real-time.

Community feed. Just like with a normal Facebook feed, the community feeds allow you to browse activity within your selected channel. 

Launch date TBD. There isn’t any information on when these new features will be launched to the public fully. But you can read the announcement here.

Why we care. Businesses with a large Facebook presence can take advantage of these new features and create groups around their product or service. There’s no guarantee they’ll result in any measurable success, but creating a community around their brand may be a way to keep people engaged.  

The post Facebook testing new sidebar, channels for groups appeared first on Search Engine Land.

a message brought to you by Wayne Vass SEO

This article first appeared on: The post %%POSTLINK%% appeared first on %%BLOGLINK%%.

Yoast SEO, one of the more popular SEO plugins for WordPress, has finally adopted IndexNow, the Microsoft backed protocol to submit content to search engines. This is available in the premium version of Yoast SEO version 19.2, the company announced.

What is IndexNow. IndexNow provides a method for websites owners to instantly inform search engines about latest content changes on their website. IndexNow is a simple ping protocol so that search engines know that a URL and its content has been added, updated, or deleted, allowing search engines to quickly reflect this change in their search results. The co-sharing of IndexNow went fully live in January 2022.

Integrations. Why Microsoft built its own plugin for WordPress sites to use IndexNow, Yoast decided to build it in to its premium plugin. Why did Yoast add it now? “The latest change to the protocol is the second significant development that made us change our minds about IndexNow. The IndexNow team changed the endpoint of the API from pinging each individual-supported search engine to a single API managed by the protocol. This means that sites only have to ping a single site, making the process much more efficient. All of this fits into our view of a sustainable crawling and indexing solution, so now is the time to implement IndexNow with a new integration in Yoast SEO,” the company explained.

What is IndexNow. IndexNow provides a method for websites owners to instantly inform search engines about latest content changes on their website. IndexNow is a simple ping protocol so that search engines know that a URL and its content has been added, updated, or deleted, allowing search engines to quickly reflect this change in their search results.

Google support? Nope, not yet. Google last year said it was testing IndexNow but since then has not said much about IndexNow. There have been some rumors that Google would not adopt this protocol but as we have seen in the search space, things change fast and often.

Why we care. Like we said before, instant indexing is an SEO’s dream when it comes to giving search engines the most updated content on a site. The protocol is very simple and it requires very little developer effort to add this to your site, so it makes sense to implement this if you care about speedy indexing.

Now, if you have WordPress and use Yoast SEO premium, you can easily active IndexNow for your site.

The post Yoast SEO Premium now offers IndexNow appeared first on Search Engine Land.

a message brought to you by Wayne Vass SEO

This article first appeared on: The post %%POSTLINK%% appeared first on %%BLOGLINK%%.

Leveraging smart bidding allows advertisers to take advantage of real-time or auction bids. Generally, there is a wide range of information helping the algorithms operate efficiently, such as time of day, past search history, location, ad budget, and more.

Most advertisers are aware of the disadvantages of automated bidding, such as the loss of control and the ability to utilize bid adjustments. But in his MX Advanced 2022 presentation, Ani explains that the efficiency and performance gains are worth it. 

Inputs and outputs

Ani explains that it’s up to us as advertisers to provide the algorithms with the data points it needs to make the right decisions in that real-time auction process. “Ultimately automated bidding will take the heavy lifting out of your campaign management and will typically outperform manual bidding. But like most things in life, you get what you give and machine learning can only make smart choices if it knows what’s valuable to your business. So it’s really important to set up campaigns and conversion actions that are in line with your business goals.”

Smart bidding strategies

There are four types of smart bidding available to use. Those are: 

• Maximize clicks
• Maximize conversions
• Maximize conversion value
• Target impression share

It’s typically suggested that when launching new campaigns to use a manual CPC or maximize clicks strategy. This gives the algorithm the data it needs to understand who the customer is and who it should go after. Ani suggests keeping tight control of your keywords and how much you’re paying per click to drive that traffic. Then when you get a decent number of conversions using that strategy, switch to smart bidding. 

The chart below from Optmyzr shows us what bid adjustments are available for your strategy and goals. 

Best practices

If you’re a service-based business, you’ll likely want to use a Target CPA strategy with Maximize Conversions. Ecommerce businesses will want to use a Maximize Conversion Value strategy with a specific ROI goal. Ultimately, it’s about aligning your business goals so that the system can improve the efficiency of those campaigns. Here are some other best campaign practices:

• Shopping campaigns. Optimize your data feed
• Search campaigns. Monitor your search terms report
• Budget changes. Incremental changes of no more than 5-10% at a time, and no changes that are “too dramatic”  
• Avoid setting very low daily budgets
• Be patient, give the campaigns 2-4 weeks to gain momentum
• Set realistic performance goals

Ani offers the advice “eyes on, hands-off.” Let the algorithm do the work and be patient!

Non-revenue generating campaigns

For campaigns that don’t have revenue ties to it, such as lead gen. or phone calls for a medical practice, the system will know how many calls or form fills are completed, but it can’t differentiate between the high-quality ones and the ones where people are looking for the wrong service. In these instances, you’ll need to ensure that the proper feedback loop is being utilized so the system can ensure you’re getting the right traffic. To prevent this, you’ll need to import offline conversions and sales data from your CRM. 

Performance to the Max

Performance Max campaigns have taken over in popularity. The campaigns supersede any other campaign types, even search. The only exception to the rule is that f the search campaigns have exact match keywords. So if you’re running a display or shopping campaign in conjunction, the Performance Max campaigns will always take precedence. 

Setting it up

Performance Max campaigns requires a different process than other Google ad campaigns you might have created. Performance Max combines dynamic search, shopping, smart shipping, and discovery all in one. 

Set up includes asset groups (ad groups), audiences ad copy, including inputs for headlines, descriptions, images, and videos, and listing (product) groups. One important thing to note is that the Performance Max will create a dynamically generated video for you if you don’t create and upload your own. These videos usually aren’t pretty, so you’ll want to ensure that you upload one of your own choosing. 

You’ll also want to make sure you have offline conversion tracking, uploaded customer lists, and built audiences around relevant keywords so Google has some direction on whom to target. If you have a product feed in the Merchant Center, Google will match your feed with the creative assets you provided in the asset group. Unfortunately, you won’t see the search terms that result in conversions or wasted ad spend, so you don’t have a lot of visibility in performance aside from revenue. The best course of action is to review in your feed which brands are spending money, and which aren’t converting. Then use that info to make changes on your offer. Keep in mind that you’ll only be able to see the data if you show “All Campaigns” and filter for Performance max. 

Watch Menachem Ani’s full SMX Advanced presentation. 

Get your free pass here.

The post Leveraging automated bidding strategies for maximum PPC performance appeared first on Search Engine Land.

a message brought to you by Wayne Vass SEO

This article first appeared on: The post %%POSTLINK%% appeared first on %%BLOGLINK%%.