Mobile Site Configuration 101: How to Choose

by Jim Yu,July 9, 2014Comments

IPhones and Androids, now in their eighth and seventh year of existence respectively, have 23 percent of the organic search market, according to April data from BrightEdge's Data Cube.

How to Diversify Your PPC Campaigns – and Your Skill Sets at the Same Time

If you've been managing pay-per-click campaigns for a while, you probably know that the "80/20" rule applies to many accounts. The "80/20" rule means that 80 percent of your traffic/sales are generated by 20 percent of your keywords. Even though this happenstance is commonplace, there is an inherent danger lurking in your account if you don't start diversifying immediately.

Around our office, we call the top-performing 20 percent "Golden Corral" keywords. These keywords provide a solid foundation for your account. However, relying solely on your golden corral keywords is known as putting all your eggs into one basket. If your golden corral keywords' performance ever slips, your entire account will suffer. Diversification insulates you from these fluctuations – because they will happen.

Diversification serves as a defensive tactic by spreading out your traffic to various campaigns. Also, this strategy is proactive because this is how good account managers provide new strategies and leadership. On the flip side, there is also risk with conducting tests and differentiating your traffic sources.

The campaign diversification process is filled with bumps, potholes, and even landmines. Hopefully, most of the tests you launch will achieve a level of success and they will evolve into long-term tactics. Let's face it: many of the new ideas you bring will not work, and that's OK. You need to have a process for launching new ideas, monitoring them closely, and making timely decisions when you have generated enough traffic to make a smart decision. Keep the things that work, and discard the tactics that don't.

If you push to learn and test new ideas, you will diversify your campaigns, which will help your overall performance. But through this process you will grow as a campaign manager as you expand your knowledge and experience. Everyone wins!

Below is a quick plan to get your diversification process started:

Define and Segment Your Golden Corral Keywords

You need to fully understand which keywords belong in your golden corral; segment those terms into specific ad groups and campaigns; monitor and optimize them precisely. If you utilize loose match types like broad match or broad match modified, you should drill down the exact match variations that are truly driving the most valuable traffic.

Develop Your Keyword List

Many accounts I review suffer from lazy keyword strategies. These accounts rely too heavily on broad match to generate the majority of their traffic. There is risk involved in this strategy because you are not truly in control of your traffic; you're allowing Google to match queries to your general keywords.

As you discover keywords that are high-value or high-potential, you need to extract those queries and shift them into exact match keywords in order to maintain tight control over your traffic. This is an evergreen process. This process should be ongoing so that you continuously expand your keyword list.

Designate a Testing Budget and Plan

Once you have a process down for regularly expanding your keyword list, then you need to designate a testing plan. As I mentioned earlier, many tests won't be successful, but you need to test to see what works. However, you don't want these tests to negatively impact overall performance – or at the very least offset the trends that may cause you to make erroneous corrective actions.

The best way to conduct testing while maintaining your core momentum is to create tests outside of your core campaigns when possible, and establish reporting that segments the performance of your core campaigns against those of your testing initiatives.

Also, you should establish a testing budget for each month or quarter. This way, your core budget is not impacted and you continue to optimize that spend – while you are using a smaller budget to find new sources of high-yield traffic.

Promote New Products/Services

I recently reviewed an e-commerce client that has an extension list of products, however only about half of their products were promoted through PPC. Their current strategy was to focus on the "heavy hitter" products that performed the best. This makes total sense and these are their 20 percent golden corral products (golden corral isn't just for keywords), but they were missing out on huge opportunities.

The client decided to devise a plan to begin expanding their promote products via AdWords. Sure, we may find that certain products just don't stack up well and they don't meet our key performance indicator (KPI) requirements, but we may also find a handful of products that do well if we try them out again – especially since these products hadn't been promoted in a few years.

Expand Your Geographic Targeting

The 80/20 rule can apply to numerous aspects of your campaigns; geographic location is one of them. I've reviewed accounts recently that focused heavily on tight niche of metro areas. This made sense because these geographic locations provided the best ROI. However, this exposed a weakness in the account because if a metro area's performance weakened this could have a significant negative impact.

You should test new markets, or perhaps re-test markets that didn't work previously. Also, you may have to establish new KPIs for these expanded markets. As with any expansion, you need to reach beyond your comfort zone, while clearly marketing your point-of-diminishing returns.

Introduce New Distribution Channels

Just within Google's service offerings you have a few distribution channels: Google Search, Search Partner Network, Google Display Network, YouTube, and Gmail Sponsored Promotions. You should review your traffic mix to see where the majority of clicks reside, and then consider an expansion test.

Each of these channels presents opportunities and challenges. Even though each of these channels can be managed through Google, they all require a unique mindset and skill set. For example, if you currently have minimal experience with the Google Display Network (GDN), then you're going to have to do some educational investment before launching any GDN campaigns.

You can link your YouTube account directly to your AdWords account and run video ads. This can be very powerful, but the targeting options for YouTube campaigns are different from standard AdWords campaigns. So, this will also require some research and education.

Launch New Ad Formats

The core of most PPC campaigns is text-based ads. You can diversify your campaign by utilizing new ad formats such as image ads via the GDN or App Ads. As with any expansion tactic, some ad formats will work better than others and App Ads are totally different from everything else because you are driving app downloads. How can you make all of this work?

On average, we find that image ads via the GDN have a higher click-through rate (CTR) but a weaker conversion rate. But that doesn't mean that they shouldn't be in your media mix. There is inventory on the GDN reserved specifically for image ads so you may new pockets of distribution. Similar to any other expansion effort, you should segment these new ad types. For example, if you launch new image ads, you should create individual campaigns or at least ad groups for these ads. You need to mark them with campaign naming conventions or labels – or both!

Enroll in New Beta Products

Google AdWords and Bing Ads launch beta products frequently. You should work with your AdWords or Bing Rep closely to get whitelisted for these betas.

For example, I have a client that tries most betas within Google (that make sense for their campaigns). Many of these betas under-performed and they weren't a good fit. But many betas have provided supplemental traffic with acceptable results. In fact, just recently we launched a new beta for this client that completely changed how we will manage their account going forward (see graph below). The up-tick in this graph was when we launched the new beta tactic in AdWords.

Publisher Guide for Adding Custom Variables in Google Tag Manager

If you're an online publisher using Google Analytics, I'm sure you've heard this before: you need to use custom variables so that you can really segment and measure your audience.

You also most likely are currently working on migrating to Google Tag Manager in order to make your life easier.

So how do you implement them together? What follows is a step-by-step guide for installing publisher-centered custom variables using Google Tag Manager.

I am going to assume, that you already have Google Tag Manager installed in your site and that one of your tags is the asynch GA js. If you don't, read this first.

Google's Justin Cutroni recommends adding seven custom variables for publishers. This article will go in detail and breakdown how to install four of them:

CategoryContent TypePublication DateAuthor

These four custom variables at the most basic level gets you a good idea of your overall site performance. Once you add these data points, you can also get closer to information that other publisher-centered analytics tools such as Parsely track.

Let's jump in!

3 Things You Need to Know Before You BeginThese custom variables should be implemented on the page level. For all the custom variables mentioned above, the value changes as the user goes from one page to the next. For example, a user might read an article by author one and then click on a link that goes to an article by Author 2. This is true for all the custom variables aforementionedYou're going to need a data layer. Do not pass go, do not collect $200. The best and only way to have these custom variables on your site is via data layer. If you want to read more about this, here's an article that gives a good explanation of how data layers work.You need the help of your front-end engineer. If you don't know this yet, you will, a good analytics person is always good to his or her front-end engineers.

Ask your front-end engineer to create a data layer that contains the four custom variables we want to add: Content Type, Author, Category, and Published Date. Direct them to the developer documentation on adding data layer for Google Tag Manager. There are two key things to check in the developer implementation:

Make sure that the data layer comes before the Google Tag Manager code (we inserted ours before the /head tag).I like keeping my values in small caps, this eliminates any potential duplicate entries that could be created due to any weird capitalizations.

Check out the way we set up the data layer in one of our sites. The data layer in the source code for that page will look like below.

4 Ways to Maximize Agency Relationships

I've had the pleasure of working in multiple capacities throughout my career. On the one hand, this includes roles on the brand side of marketing and dealing directly with agencies. The flip side is working within an agency and dealing directly with brand marketing teams. I've enjoyed both and believe anyone in marketing should get perspectives from both sides.

Here are a few tips on how to maximize the agency-brand relationship to ensure the highest return on investment (ROI).

1. Relationships Matter

First and foremost, remember that you're working with people. I've engaged with clients that had no respect for the individuals working on their campaigns, and I can tell you that nothing good comes from it.

There are always situations where lighting a fire is a good thing. However, the vast majority of the time you want the project manager and team to genuinely care about you and your organization.

If that's the case, creativity and passion will happen naturally and campaigns will produce a higher caliber of results. Project managers are more likely to push their team, stick their neck out, and sacrifice their time for clients they liketo collaborate with.

2. Encourage Bold Moves

Taking calculated risks is part of any investing activity. With marketing, this is no different.

Success is achieved through a combination of science and creativity. Sometimes you need to test new ideas, and some of them may not meet expected outcomes.

These "failures" are opportunities to learn and should be seen as such. Without problems, there is no growth. If you're not growing, you're dying.

Learn and grow from campaigns and efforts that didn't turn out as expected. I like the phrase, "test often and fail fast." With that said, don't mistake evolution for incompetence. There's no excuse for consistent failure or testing something with no research or foundation.

3. Collaborate

If you're on the brand side, remember you hired the agency for a reason: take the time to trust its judgment. If you're an agency working with a brand, don't assume you know everything.

The client's experience, connections, and direction are critical to your success. View your partnership as a mutual endeavor that increases the prosperity of a given company. Collaboration and openness are critical to achieving this.

4. Bring the Energy

Nothing is worse than attending a meeting with someone that sucks the energy from the room. You've all been there and know what I'm talking about.

Positivity breeds positive results.This increases opportunities for success. Bring excitement to the table, and you'll be amazed at how different the meeting outcomes will be.

Summary

Generating positive returns and getting things done should be motivation for both parties. Ensuring this happens involves effort from both sides. Sometimes a little relationship maintenance is needed to take things to the next level.

How to Implement an Engaging Content Marketing Plan for the Finance Industry

Finance-related information is often dismissed as boring and dry and a pain to read. But it need not be that way. After all, everybody needsgood and reliable information when it comes to money. So it should not be difficult for financial institutes to grab people's attention with the right kind of content.

For an engaging content marketing plan, focus on creating content that helps your customers and provides them with the resources they need to make informed decisions.

Yes, we live in a consumer-driven world now, and not only do you need to understand exactly what content your target audience wants, you need to be obsessed with them to succeed. This post will help you do exactly this.

A Bird's Eye View

Before you dive into a new strategy, it's good to get the basics right. Make a plan and create an overview of your goals and what your content marketing will look like. Here's something to get you started.

Social Channels: Facebook and Twitter are the "must do" channels. But if you have the time and the resources for it, jump into LinkedIn communities or run a Google

3 Tests to Determine if Mobile Ads are Right for Your Online Store

by Mary Weinstein,July 11, 2014Comments

Mobile use is such a part of our lives that 73 percent of people admit they would feel panicked about losing a phone. Mobile use is a pervasive habit for our society- across search, shopping, and social networks.

Consumers spend more than 15 hours a week on mobile sites and apps, a year over year mobile use has grown 25 percent, according to Google. Just as marketers switched from print to television advertising, many marketers are emphasizing a mobile presence for their online store.

Should You Set Up Mobile Ads?

Mobile is big, and getting bigger. But are mobile search ads a good investment for your site?

Below are three questions to ask to help your determine your potential for mobile success, and analytics reports you can run to help answer those questions.

1. How Much Traffic Comes to Your Site From Mobile?

How many of your users are actually coming to your site using a mobile device? Depending on your site and consumer base, this answer will vary widely.

If your client demographic is older, you may have very few mobile visitors. Younger shoppers, or a more tech savvy audience will inversely be more likely to browse and purchase using mobile. Don't assume your site visitors are or aren't visiting on mobile. Look at the data first.

To determine how much of your site traffic comes from mobile, run a device report in Google Analytics. To do this, login to Analytics and select mobile in the left navigation under Audience. Click overview to view the mobile sessions, users, and other user traffic information for mobile:

Google Panda: Understanding the Technical Inner Workings

by Ben Goodsell,July 11, 2014Comments

The concept of a search engine is very simple. Database the location of pages and return the most relevant results.

Primitive search engines only understood words on the pages in their database and returned pages that included those searched words. Google essentially came along with the ability to reorder those search results based on how many other pages on the Internet linked to them.

Since then Google and other search engines have improved these foundational ranking factors and developed thousands of ways to reorder search results so only the most relevant are displayed to the user. For example the "freshness" of content or the location of where the search took place.

Panda is just another way Google reorders results based on the quality of a site's content.

Throughout this article we speculate in detail what can be learned from the "Panda Patent". The verbiage used is often vague and sometimes makes it hard to retain meaning, so here's a quick concept breakdown that should help throughout.

Panda refreshes gathered information about links and queries associated with a site.Upon a user search, each result listing (URL / Page) is given an initial score based on relevance to search and page quality.Calculations of #1 and #2 determine if the result listing (URL / Page) is above or below a threshold.Results are reordered by final values.Looking Back and the New "Panda Rank"

Way back in February 2011, Google released a major change in how they order search results. In it they explain:

This update is designed to reduce rankings for low-quality sites—sites which are low-value add for users, copy content from other websites or sites that are just not very useful.

They go on to say:

...it is important for high-quality sites to be rewarded, and that's exactly what this change does.

Panda looked at the quality of content as it related to a site.