Where are Title Tags Used?

SERP Results

The most obvious place it’s used is in the titles of search engine results pages (SERP’s).  In addition, words in the user’s search are bolded if they are displayed in the SERP’s.  You can see a result alone for the search “sem services” where our website is displayed with the search term bolded.

Bookmarking & Sharing Services

Your internet experience is inundated with websites asking you to share what you’re viewing (including our website… you should totally share this article), probably to the point to where you’re ignoring them like they’re banner ads.  But from time to time, you share things.  Or, bookmarking services such as Delicious or Scoop.it will default to using the Title tag as a link or “recommend” using it.  So not only is important from attracting attention from a sharing perspective (the links you don’t have to work for are the best kind of links), but they also provide nice anchor text for links out there on the web, if Google cares about that anymore (they do, but it isn’t important as it once was).

Tabs & Browser Header

Before tabbed browsing, you’d get a big “Title” across the top of the browser with your tag on it, indicating to users a kind of header for your website.  Those days are gone.  Big screens and tabs have made that little bar a bit of an afterthought.  However, it does show up in the tab area of browsers, and displays the entire tag when hovering (see below).  At least starting with some relevant keywords will remind users why they have that tab open in the first place.

Best practices for Title tags:

Title Length

70 characters. Maybe a couple less.  Try to make it so your entire title can be displayed on a SERP.  This isn’t completely necessary, but it’s best practice for optimizing your pages.

Uniqueness

Titles need to be different on all of your pages.  We still see clients with the same title for each page, which is a big no-no.  The title tag should specifically represent the content that is on a page, so make sure it’s customized based on the kind of content being displayed.

Descriptive & Keyword Rich

Title tags are nearly universally recognized as one of the most important elements when it comes to SEO.  Make sure your keywords are in there.  And the closer they are to the front of the page, the more importance they’re going to carry.  We’ll get into this more later, but it’s a good idea to start with your major keyword.

Remember Branding

In an all-out effort to increase search engine relevancy, SEO professionals might try to completely wipe the branding off your title tags.  Don’t let them.  If you have a long company name or need a lot of space for some reason, then you might need to make some compromises.  However, increasing brand awareness and using title space to reinforce your brand name as an authority in the industry can be very beneficial.  If your name is recognizable, then it could even increase CTR’s since you appear as a “trusted” source.

At the same time, Google’s search relevancy personalization is making this LESS necessary for branded searches.

Attractive to Searchers

If your title tag is a ridiculous combination of scrunched together words/keywords, someone seeing that title is going to be less likely to click on it.  Keep CTR in mind, not just rankings.  Your meta information should look professional and trustworthy.

Advanced Tips

End with Your Brand Name

Common title tags include something like this:

#1: Brand/Company Name | Primary Keyword – Secondary Keyword
#2: Primary Keyword – Secondary Keyword | Brand/Company Name

We prefer #2 in this situation.  The closer the keyword is to the beginning of the title tag, the more weight that will be associated with it.  In all likelihood, you have a stanglehold on the rankings for your brand name, so there is no need to give too much power to that name.  You’ll rank high there naturally, so give yourself an advantaged on non-branded keywords by leading with them.

Use All the Space Wisely – Avoid Filler Words

Avoid using filler words like “and” “or” and “the” unless you have a good reason for it.  Commas, |’s, and -’s can save you space and still make things look professional (and grammatically correct).

Think Long-Tail

In the past, and really using the example provided again, SEO’s would concentrate on a couple isolated keyword phrases to target for each page.  This really isn’t how things should work.  For long-tail content and very specific articles, sure, that’s a good way to go about it.  But for the majority of your pages, there are a lot of variations of searches that you want to appear for.  So don’t limit yourself.  For our home page, we just used a lot of keywords that are very relevant to what we do.  Sure, we lead with “sem services” since it’s a very important search term for us, but after that we don’t target specific keyword strings.  We get 6 descriptive keywords in there, and hope through our content, authority building, and other SEO efforts, that we’ll rank on a variety of keywords in combinations of those terms.

Implication of Google’s Increased SERP Personalization of Title Tags

As Google continues to take over our lives and tell us what’s best for us (through personalized results, among other things), it’s starting to affect our title tags as well.  You’ve probably noticed that your title tag isn’t displayed the same way all the time anymore.  Google has attempted to increase relevancy by making their own changes to how the Title is displayed in SERP’s.  Here’s a few ways we’ve noticed its effects:

Branded Terms

When you search for your brand name, or something close to it, rather than displaying your typical title tag, Google has decided just to display your company name.  This seems to be true only if the title tag doesn’t have a certain degree of relevancy to your article title tag.  Our for example, includes an abbreviation of our name (LDM), but that isn’t relevant enough for Google.  Here’s how we’re displayed:

The good news here?  We don’t have to waste precious space in our Title tag devoting it to our long company name.  Google can take care of business for us.  In the past, especially for the home page, you’d need heavy branding, but now we can get away with a little bit less.  The above statements about the importance of branding throughout your pages still holds true, but the point is it isn’t necessary to take drastic steps to be relevant for your branded terms.

Geographic Searches

This might be a bit of a unique situation for us, but we’ve noticed that on searches in our geographic region Google is simplifying our Title tags in results.  Everyone else on the 1st page for SEO searches in Rochester NY (roughly where we’re located) is doing a nice job of using all their keywords in the title tag.  You’d hope they would, as SEO companies.  But we don’t do that.  We prefer to focus on nation-wide searches – so while we happily provide services to people in our area, it isn’t our main focus.  So you won’t find “Rochester” in our titles.  But we do have a lot of search engine strength in the SEO, PPC, SEM, and Analytics industries, so we rank in our area just based on our minimal use of our area in the content, and our backlink profile (for a little more information on this aspect of personalized results, take a look at this blog I wrote on how location is affecting SERP’s).  The point is, this is how Google decides to display our page:

Since we run wordpress, it looks like the basic %pagetitle% – %companyname% structure, which begs the question as to how Google is deciding exactly what to display.  It doesn’t appear to be solely based on the search term, so either they’re pulling that secondary title from WordPress, or they’re doing it based on internal linking anchor text (which on our site is mostly just “SEO”).  Either way, if they don’t like your title, they aren’t going to use it.

The Future of Title Tags

It’s possible that Google will continue to personalize title tags based on searches.  But there’s really only so much you can do.  The importance of the page title will continue to be very high as long as webmasters follow all the rules.  Think of it as a way to send a very positive signal to Google for a number of keywords, but if you mess it up you could send a very negative one.  So don’t try to cheat here… it’s too easy to detect.

Follow all the best practices again, carefully craft unique title tags for each page on your site (or come up with a dynamic system which conforms well with industry standards), and use keywords in a meaningful way.  Title tags are important, but as far as SEO goes most competitors are going to have pretty good tags… but poor title tags will handicap your overall efforts.

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Each brand and product probably has a different formula for the best opportunities they can command within Adwords, but here’s my Game of Thrones ultimate King Ad:

Effective Ad Copy

As I’ve mentioned before, ensure strong calls to actions, use descriptive words that set you apart from the competition, and offer some sort of value or promotion to the customer.  These are the keys to driving action. For more information on techniques for ad writing read this.

An Offer Extension:

In the form of coupons, deals, or discounts, offer extensions are an extra incentive for your customers to click on your ad and buy your product. These can be customizable down to the ad group level and managed for specific offer times to maximize ROI. With so much competition in the Adwords market, it’s important to differentiate yourself from the competition and incentivize potential customers to click on your ad.

Customer Reviews:

Like any medium of marketing, people trust their peers. The star rating extension allows your ad to show your customer reviews. When it comes to online retail, reviews play a major role in the decision process. If you have positive and plentiful reviews, this is an absolute must have elements in your game.

Product Extensions:

Obviously this only works for e-commerce sites, however product extensions are seriously under-utilized. They are the Tyrion Lanister of this Throne war. There are several strategies that can be taken with this extension: select a few products that are loss leaders to draw people to your site, a few products with very high margins, and some of your top sellers. These products will attract customers to your site and ultimately increase your ROI.  They will help build your ad real estate, and offer a direct path to products for your searcher. For more information on product extensions set up (as Merchant Center can be fairly tricky) check out my article, Google Shopping: Merchant Center Step-by-Step Setup Guide.

Obviously there are a lot of other strategies and techniques that go into digital advertising, and each company will needs its own unique effort to maximize ROI. All I can say for now is, get ready to rumble because the battle for the Throne is on.

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• Location Extensions:  These extensions are used to aid users in find your business’s location. I’m sure the name didn’t give that away, but given the huge number of local searches for contact information such as phone numbers and business addresses, this can hold a lot of potential. These are particularly useful for brick-and-mortar businesses because it also ads your store information in the relevant searches and on Google maps. Helping your customer find you on their first try is obviously beneficial.

• Site link Extensions: These are additional links below your ads that you can be customized to display the relevant, appropriate text to draw traffic to more specific landing pages and drive conversions. Commonly used for promotions, relevant category direction, or form submissions these can be utilized to help your ad be more relevant to your customers and provide a bit more stomping ground for your ad.

• Offer Extensions:  In the form of coupons, deals, or discounts offer extensions are an extra incentive for your customers to click on your ad and buy your product. These can be customizable down to the ad group level and managed for specific offer times to optimize ROI.

• Product Extensions: These extensions are rarely used, particularly with the development of Google Shopping within the past year, but still worth mentioning. Displayed as links to individual products on your ad, product extensions are fed from product feeds using Google Merchant Center. They help build your ad real estate, and offer a direct path to products for your searcher. For more information on how to manage Merchant Center Accounts, product feeds, or Product Listing Campaigns please refer to Google Shopping: Merchant Center Step-by-Step Setup Guide.

• Call Extensions: This enhanced function displays your phone number next to the ad and on mobile devices it provides the ability to click and call directly.

• Social Extensions: Sharing web content has great potential for advertisers. This extension allows people to endorse Google + pages from your ads. The main benefit of this, like any social effort, is to generate buzz and keep brand awareness. If you’re building your social presence, this is an essential extension. *If you do not have a strong social presence this will probably hurt your efforts – for information on this topic check out The 7 Questions to Ask Before Taking Your Brand Social.

• Seller Rating Extensions:  This is like a little endorsement from your customers, and also probably the hardest to implement.  In the form on a 5 star rating, these will show right next to your ad in the search results. Seller ratings are only beneficial for companies with positive and consistent feedback; they will not appear unless you can maintain 30 unique reviews with 3.5 stars or higher from the past 12 months (hence the most difficult, especially for smaller companies).

I fully believe that Adwords extensions are under-emphasized by clients and not pushed hard enough by agencies. With the competition in this market, it’s extremely important to do what you can to make your product stand out and ensure customers are clicking on your ads rather than the competition’s.  As I said before, a lot of these extensions can work very well together, providing your customer with all of the information they need.  However, it is important to look at what is best to emphasize for your individual site and expand on those specialties. For more information on other Adwords optimization techniques, check out my author profile.

The post A Guide to Google Adwords Extensions: Enhance Your PPC Campaigns appeared first on Londes Digital Marketing.

Prior to joining Londes Digital Marketing, Salton received his bachelor’s degree from Rochester Institute of Technology  in Advertising and Public Relations.

About Londes Digital Marketing:
Londes Digital Marketing is a full-service digital marketing firm providing quantitative-based, ROI-focused strategic solutions. Clients range from local professionals to large e-commerce websites, with Londes Digital Marketing providing specialized services in SEM, SEO, Analytics, and Conversion Rate Optimization. For more information, e-mail info@londes.com or visit www.londes.com.

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1. 1. SEO’s find an algorithm loophole
2. 2. Businesses are started advertising and exploiting loophole
3. 3. It works (for a while)
4. 4. Google penalizes (Panda) or devalues (Penguin) the sites that used these practices and closes the loophole

This cycle tends to repeat whenever Google finds a way to close the door on SEO’s.  They have the ability to just find the “next best thing” or a new tactic that now works better based on a different evolution in the search algorithm.

I currently see one of these situations developing with local citations, or local directory listings.  I’ll take this over the spammy directories of 10 years ago, but it’s still becoming a problem.  Today, I’ll go over the local citation bubble that is forming, and how to be careful when evaluating it.

Local Citations and the “New SEO”

Ever since Google launched their local listings blocks in organic listings, SEO’s have been trying to figure out how to increase rankings on them (here are a few for you).  One factor that has a decidedly positive influence is the quantity, accuracy, and quality of structured citations.  In other words, the number of correct business listings throughout the web.

The theory is, from Google’s perspective, the more a businesses is referenced, the more authority it has.  A fine assumption, I suppose.  The issue?  Citations are even easier to get than links.  Text is not a difficult thing to post on the Internet.  So, with the knowledge that these are helpful, a storm began brewing of services concentrated on selling volumes of “high-quality” structured citations.

Be careful.  Not all these are high-quality.  And very few of them are worth paying anything for.

The Yelp Model

Yelp has been around for a long time.  A leader in online listings and reviews, its large user base constantly weighs in on local business quality.  The reviews are useful largely due to the website’s popularity (what good are review sites without real reviews), and the business listings act as high-quality business citations in the “new SEO.”

Yelp is an example of a high-quality local citation you want to claim for your business or your client’s business.

Not that PageRank is a vital metric these days, but it can still be a decent barometer of quality, but Yelp has a PR of 7.  You can also look at domain age to verify its legitimacy.  Compete.com will help as well, showing a high volume of traffic to the domain.

The Clone Army

What businesses have started to do is create Yelp clones.  They aren’t as good as Yelp, but they try to accomplish roughly the same thing.  Each offers basic business listings and customers the ability to review the business.

Businesses aren’t just creating 1 clone and trying to market it to consumers.  They’re creating dozens.  And the trick is they’re offering services to “manage all the listings in one place.”  Well, that’s nice of them.  They’re using the same database software for all of them and just sending the same data to all of the websites.  They even advertise it as “making sure your information is consistent.”

Now there are some out there that are doing a little of this and utilizing popular site API’s to provide some value to the structured listings.  I’m not saying all these services are terrible – I’m just saying that the listings on these clone sites are going to end up as worthless as the bulk, untargeted directories of the SEO glory days.

Indicators of Good Local Directories

There are good local directories and bad local directories.  How do you know what’s not only safe, but worth your time then?

Geographically-Focused Directories: Good. If there is a directory specifically for your city, that’s a good place to be.  These “bulk citation” sites don’t really have the scale to focus too locally, so one designed specifically for your area is a great source for local links and citations (look for your city in the domain name).

High PR, Aged, Well-trafficked Directories: Good. As discussed, Yelp is a great example of this.  Other examples might include Angie’s List or the Better Business Bureau.  I’m not saying it’s worth shelling out all that money to the BBB (not saying it isn’t worth it either), but it is a high-quality citation.

Indicators of Bad Local Directories

No Traffic – If a website isn’t receiving organic traffic in the directory space, it’s probably a lower quality placement.  Check Compete.com to see what kind of traffic it’s getting.

Low PR (2 or less) – This holds especially true if there is a salesperson trying to sell you on some kind of management package.  If half their local directories are PR 1’s, be wary.  Very few websites with dedicated sales teams have been around such a short time that they aren’t more established than this.

No comments/reviews – Another indicator of traffic quality and user engagement.  If users aren’t actually on the review site submitting reviews and comments, that website is going to end up adding very little or no value to the online world.  It’s just a citation.  And if it doesn’t add real value, but does influence SEO, you can bet Google will be working to correct that issue.

Cross-Promotion/Advertising – Do several of the sites advertised in the “package” link or reference one another?  Does it constantly advertise their package?  Do they look to have almost identical structures?  Those are some red flags when it comes to quality.

The Takeaway

We’ve been saying it for a while now: there are no shortcuts when it comes to long-term success for SEO.  Just like any other “bubble,” these local citation methods may work for a while, but eventually that bubble will burst, bad directories devalued, and you’ll be left with very little value for you or your client.

I doubt there will be penalties and a lot of fuss over it – more like a gradually decreasing impact on your rankings.  So if you want a temporary gain, go get all the low-quality citations.  But we like to take a more holistic approach to long-term results, so I’ll be concentrating on high-quality directories, avoiding the local directory sales teams (who are always trying to “White Label SEO” our company), and trying to build some real long-term value.

We provide local SEO optimization services across the country, not just for the Rochester NY area.  If you’d like a little more information on how we approach our local strategy, e-mail us or reach out on social media!

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Media today is consumed with “like us” and follow us on Twitter messages. The problem is, many of these brands don’t successfully carry out social campaigns, leaving their customers with a sour taste. Before you dive in to make your brand social, ask yourself a few of these questions:

1. What is your goal with social?

It seems like a lot of companies go into social these days without a clear strategy.  As a small business it’s important to allocate your resources effectively, so putting together a clear strategy and set of goals is essential. Unless your company just sells a product and is only looking for sales, as a small business awareness and relationships are top priorities.

2. Are you B2B or B2C?

Business to business clients tend to move into the social market unnecessarily. It’s important to gauge your audience and understand where they do their research. If you’re a business to business site, then chances are you’re better off allocating your time and resources to forums and industry blogs rather than social. For consumer products, social is much more important given that consumers are more likely researching on social platforms.

3. What is your brand/products social nature?

Is your product something people tend to talk about? Do you receive high volumes of reviews and feedback? Have you noticed your brand or similar products being mentioned on social media? Do people have a relationship with your brand? It’s important to understand how your users talk about your brand and where they prefer to interact with you. If your customers don’t use social media, that’s a sure sign that going social is not a good strategy for your brand. Don’t try to change their habits. Do some research and find out if your customers are looking for you on different social platforms before you delve into an extensive campaign.

4. Can you commit long-term?

Another element to a successful social campaign is time. Someone in your company (or an outsource) must have the available time to commit to postings, interaction, responses, and monitoring. A big part of being social is being in the moment, not following up the next day, or in a week, or any amount of time after the fact. Being in the moment to capture sentiment, engagement, and buzz is pertinent to a productive campaign.  For example, check out Oreo’s real-time Twitter update when the lights went out at the SuperBowl.

5. Do you have the resources and technical ability to execute?

Represent your brand via social in the same manner you would any other media. Quality should not be passed by when developing social campaigns. This means using appealing visuals, interactive design, and whatever other relevant tools and applications are appropriate to your brand/product. If you don’t have the technical ability to make this happen, or aren’t willing to outsource, then going social is not a good strategy for you.

6. Are your customers loyal?

Social campaigns tend to be the most successful and rewarding for brands that have a strong, loyal customer base. One of the main benefits of social is user-generated content. So if your customers are already loyal, engaged, and interactive with your on other platforms, then social is the next natural step in your brands evolution.

7. Can you offer a promotion or incentive?

Whether you offer a monetary promotion or some other benefit to your customers, it’s essential to your success that you provide value through your social media.  If you aren’t providing value, there will be less lasting benefits of the campaign.  So create a contest, offer a discount, or provide value in another way to your customers.

Ask yourself these questions before getting involved with social media. If you don’t believe me, try looking at some of your small or local brands on Facebook… impressed?

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If you’re running or evaluating PPC campaigns (or any kind of marketing campaign really) for an e-commerce site and just measuring sales, you’re undervaluing the effect of the campaign. The intermediate or influencing steps in the sales process used to measure these effects have been dubbed “microconversions.” Makes sense. Not full conversions, but useful steps along the way that lead to future conversions, or even better, long-term relationships with customers.

So let’s talk about some examples of microconversions and why you should track them.

Here are some ways that you should be engaging PPC customers beyond just a direct sale:

Social Engagement
Facebook likes, and followers on Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and Google+ can be important long-term marketing tools that could be as valuable, if not more valuable, than an actual first-visit conversion. In each situation, you’re given “life-time” access to providing updates to potential customers.

As these social networks have grown, they’ve also aided in your ability to continue to market to customers successfully. Facebook allows businesses to run offers followers can claim and has its own ad network where you can target messages specifically to followers, in addition to followers seeing updates and engaging with your social presence. Twitter provides constant updates and interaction capabilities with users, and LinkedIn provides updates as well. Google+ is growing, and their addition of communities and ties to Google’s network will surely provide advertising opportunities in the future. And Pinterest, one of the fastest growing social networks, not only shows users your visual updates, but is also a medium that encourages sharing and increases awareness for your brand or products.

Depending on the strength of the social program accompanying the website, the value of a social contact can have different values. If your social media presences are just “there” and don’t really provide value, those followers and likes are probably relatively useless. If you actively engage followers, turn followers into purchases, influencers, and brand advocates, then depending on the user, they could be extremely valuable.

So, especially when it comes to social media, your microconversions are worth what you put into them (you’ll see this is a bit of a recurring theme).

E-Mail Capture
E-mail marketing is one of the oldest online marketing tricks in the book. Maybe it’s an industry newsletter, daily deals, or just periodic promotions, but effectively engaging users via e-mail can be extremely valuable. If you are able to create interesting e-mails that keep users interested and provide incentives to act later, then an e-mail address can be a long-term gold mine.

It isn’t just about effective messaging, though. Your landing page and website also need to place an emphasis on gathering e-mail addresses so PPC visitors will convert. Create attractive sign-up forms that include sign-up incentives, or guidance regarding the types of e-mails they will receive. It could be as simple as a 15% off coupon for subscribing or mentioning that they’ll receive periodic coupons or industry news (depending on what your users are looking for).

Collecting e-mail addresses and sending a poorly thought out message once a quarter isn’t going to help you rationalize your PPC campaign very much. A dedicated focus on e-mail marketing, however, with well-research presentations and effective incentives, can turn subscribers into much more. It can also feed social media presences, helping develop a more complete overall marketing strategy.

Site Registrations
More and more online stores are offering two different options for checking out: site registration and guest checkout. A lot of people opt for the guest checkout, but plenty register on the site as well. This helps you convert cart abandons and continue to market (usually via e-mail) to these potential customers over time. They can send reminders of unfinished shopping carts, or use retargeting ads to get them back to the website.

Plus, if they’re registered on your site, it likely increases the chances of them coming back to make additional purchases. Not only can you continue to market to them, but the checkout is going to be easier the second time as well. The easier it is to check out, the better it is for your e-commerce store, and thus the higher real long-term returns on your PPC campaigns.

Wish Lists
Yes, I know they aren’t used as much as they used to be. There’s aren’t many people making birthday lists and sending them to their moms. But the capability is there in most online stores, so if people use it, consider it some kind of microconversion. In all likelihood, these can be viewed more as cart abandons than wish lists (people add things to their cart, leave, then might come back later to see if they really want to purchase).

Retargeting/Remarketing
Retargeting or Remarketing, terms used fairly interchangeably, is running advertisements across display networks to users who have previously visited your website. These can be customized based on certain pages that they have visited, and for larger e-commerce sites they can be even be customized to display certain products users have viewed.

In this sense, every visitor to your website who doesn’t constantly clear his/her cookies (ads run based on browser cookies) and is interested in your products, provides some kind of value to your PPC campaign. Even if they don’t convert on their first visit, users will constantly see your branding as they browse the web, remind them of your company when they are ready to make a purchase, or encouraging them to further research your products (or engage on social media networks).

Downloads
Do you offer PDF’s, case studies, or white papers on your website for download? If so, when someone reads one it’s a pretty good indicator of engagement. Track downloads and count them as successes – that’s added value and a greater chance they’ll remember your brand and come back for a purchase later.

Video Views
Advanced analytics can let you know how long people view videos on your site for and allow you to set up goals (microconversions) to let you know when you’re having a sufficient impact. Even if these visits don’t lead directly to conversions, if users are spending time viewing your marketing material, then the visit was a somewhat successful one. No revenue on the first visit, but they were engaged with your branding and marketing, which could benefit your brand in the future.

RSS Subscribes
If you operate a blog, users can typically subscribe to your RSS feed so they are notified when you make additional posts. Users interested in keeping up with your content are similar to social follows in that they will be constantly informed of your business updates. That certainly adds long-term value to your brand and website.

Time on Site / Number of Pageviews
The most basic engagement metrics you can monitor via analytics are time on site, time on page, and the number of page views per visitor (you can also look at bounce rates, new vs returning visitors, etc) to give you an idea of how effective these visits are. Some might call it a stretch to call these microconversions, but it’s acceptable to call a certain amount of brand impact a success. Whether it’s viewing a lot of pages or spending a lot of time researching your brand, it can have long-term impact on the user that provides value (especially in conjunction with remarketing campaigns).

“Get Out What You Put In”
The better your ability to convert users across other marketing methods, the more value PPC microconversions will have. If you don’t make an effort to convert visitors outside your website, then there isn’t much value added. But if your brand has other quality marketing programs – actively engaging and converting users over social networks, writing compelling e-mails, and displaying quality ads, then PPC values extend far beyond the value of the sale.

The post Microconversions for E-Commerce – Finding True ROI for Your E-Commerce Adwords Campaigns appeared first on Londes Digital Marketing.

Your Selling Point

What makes your brand stand out? Why should customers choose you over the competition? Do you have the best quality, greatest selection, best customer service? Make sure you include this information in your ads. If your customers already know you, then this will remind them why they want your products. If they don’t know you, this is you chance to sell them on your products- so make it count. Like all marketing, its best to be able to quanlify. Include things like pricing, promotions, exclusive offers, etc. The more qualified your ad is, the more qualified customers will be clicking. Vague offerings may generate higher click counts but likely result in lower conversion rates. It’s important to get customers who are actually interested in converting to click on your ad.

Call to Action

Even for branding purposes, a strong call to action is probably one of the most important elements to text ad copy. Simply stating facts, branding, or products in an ad doesnt encourage your customers to take action. Use strong words that demand action for the best results. Depending on what type of conversion you are looking for this could be anything from Call Now! to Buy Today! or even Request Information Here! Make the ad copy clear so that there is no doubt in your customers mind what they should do.

Keywords Keywords Keywords

Including keywords in your ad copy is beneficial in two main ways. 1st is that it increases relevance both the user and Google. Obviously users are looking for things related to the keyword they’ve typed in – if you put their keyword in the header, this is exceptionally relevant to them.  Google also uses Ad Relevance to determine quality scores, and thus placements.  The more relevant Google thinks your ad is, the better placements you’ll get.  The second reason is that keywords that match up appear in bold, drawing even more attention to your ads and increasing the likelihood that your customer will click on your ad.

Quality Score

Landing page experience has a huge affect on conversion rates, bounce rates, and quality score. Google looks to make the users experience as beneficial as possible, so if your landing page doesn’t have much to do with your ad or keywords they will rank your ad poorly. Make sure your ad links to a page that has relevant content, keywords, and conversion opportunity.  If someone searches “green umbrellas” and you have a category page dedicated to green umbrellas, you’d want to choose that as your destination URL instead of the home page.

Device / Placement Management

Creating ads for specific device types is important for conversion rates. For example, people searching on mobile devices are more likely to click on ads with shorter, more direct content (obviously since they’re screens are smaller). Also keep in mind if you site is not mobile enables, driving traffic back to your site is probably not the best strategy. In fact, for mobile devices, you should probably have a separate campaign anyways (unless you’re opted into enhanced campaigns which is really a whole other story).

Writing ads based on where they are going to be positions is almost as important as what the ad actually says. Ads will look extremely different if they are placed in the top 3 positions vs. something lower. Similarly ads within content look less appealing if not written properly. Take a look at the differences in appearance. Keep this in mind when you’re writing your copy, and take note of the average position of your ads.

The post Creating Text Ads in Google Adwords to Increase ROI appeared first on Londes Digital Marketing.

Look, the whole Google Grants program is a nice idea.  But the $1 CPC limit of the past was a big problem, since it’s so difficult to find keywords that you can bid on for under $1.  Google was generously giving all this money away, but it wasn’t money that non-profit institutions could spend.  So when they announced they were bumping the price up to $2 I got a little excited – this could create a lot more opportunities to get exposure for our non-profit clients.

But wait.

I always like to ask myself “why?” when a large company makes a move like this.  What’s in it for Google?  Maybe I’m a cynic.  Ok, I am a cynic.  But I think I’ve got good reason on this one.

And here’s the thing.  With the “now appear below traditional Adwords advertisers” clause in the recent policy, it doesn’t matter what the CPC is.  Not one bit.  It could be $2.  It could be $200.

From a competitiveness standpoint at least.  Of course Google still just gives you $10k/month ($329ish/day), so the only thing the CPC affects now is traffic maximization situations… which is actually WORSE for non-profits.  More on this later.

Well, I have a degree in economics.  I might as well use it a little.  So here’s a chart of the previous situation with the $1 CPC max, competitive market for non-profits.

A couple notes:

• The $1CPC policy essentially is creating a price floor on clicks at $1.  After all, non-profits are willing to spend their money, so they’re going to just bid $1 on everything.

• Surplus represents what non-profits would be willing to pay with their grant money but can’t due to lack of click supply.  Economically a surplus, but it’s really just a fake money surplus in this case.

• The green and red areas represent the value that non-profits get.

• The green area represents clicks that are available but no paying advertiser really wants them.  So non-profits can scoop them up with no cost to Google.

• Here’s the problem for Google.  The red area represents money Google is losing due to their philanthropy. Since non-profits can bid $1 on all these clicks and it’s a competitive, level playing field market, they’re going to outbid paying advertisers for these placements.

It stands to reason that an economist at Google saw the red area of the chart and identified it as an opportunity to make more money for the company.  And he/she is correct.  Non-profits are stealing away clicks where the equilibrium market price lies below $1.

So they came up with this new policy.  Let’s check out my supply-demand chart on this one:

Fancy, right?  Here are the notes:

• The price floor is gone.  Since the max bid is now essentially just under any paying advertisers max bid, the non-profit demand must lie just below the advertiser demand so long as advertiser demand exists.

• Non-Profit demand jumps back to the Max CPC when market demand for the clicks is 0.  Or, when advertisers don’t want them.  The market for those clicks is now JUST non-profits.  It doesn’t matter what the Max CPC is in this case, as all non-profits will be bidding it ($2 in this case).

• Surplus still represents all the money non-profits would like to use but can’t.  It grew substantially.

• The green area represents what the non-profits get now.  All the clicks that paying advertisers don’t want.  I added S2, a second surplus line, because the original one would have shown no value for non-profits at all.  S2 exists if we assume there is some click supply available that paying advertisers have no interest in… and the value nonprofits get is the are between the supply available and the advertiser demand line.

• There is no more red area. Google is now getting all of the revenue they can.  The blue area represents that money they were losing in the previous situation that they have now regained.

• The blue area also represents the advertisers with a competitive market price CPC of less than $1 who can now get cost-effective clicks since they don’t have to compete with subsidized non-profits anymore.

WINNER: Google

WINNER: Advertisers with a competitive market price CPC less than $1

LOSER: Non-Profits

Even more interestingly, the move from $1 to $2 is really just a PR move.  Which, by the way, everyone has been eating up.  Most people reacted with excitement, anyways.  In reality, all this really does is cut the number of possible clicks in half.

With this move, non-profits are simply going to be bumping max CPC’s from $1 to $2.  Instead of getting a maximum of 330 people on that monthly budget, you can now only get 165.  After all, we’re working with a fixed-quantity supply situation.  As I’ve shown in the previous discussion, quantity supplied is actually going to DECREASE with this move as well.

So, I guess you could say I’m not very excited about it.

But there’s good news!

When has economic analysis ever been right about anything!?  I’d like to maintain my Friedmanian right to change my mind.  Or, in other words, in staying true to economist form I’ve made a number of supportive assumptions.  Enough that, if I were you and you are someone running campaigns for non-profits, I wouldn’t be tying rocks to my feet quite yet.

This analysis assumes:

• There is no value for non-profits if competitive market demand exists.  Meaning either advertisers are using all available space, or that the space they are not using is worthless.

• It is true market value bidding, without artificial floors.  In other words, “below minimum bid” does not exist on keywords between $1-2 and so new opportunities exist.

Those are the important ones that I can think of that can give you some hope.  In other words, those assumptions don’t hold true, but I feel comfortable making them since I think they will have a fairly minor impact on results.  And by fairly minor impact, I mean I’m writing a blog here people, not trying to get my Ph.D.

What Should Non-Profits Do?

You should do what you have been doing, but keep in mind there’s a good chance you’ll be competing more against other non-profits now.  And that’s a level playing field.  Make sure your ads are landing pages are optimized for keywords, as any competitive advantage in that area will help.

Also, keep in mind that you might be looking at more side ad placements on keywords, so adjust your strategy accordingly.

The post Google Grants: How Google Killed Non-Profits by Giving them Twice as Much Money appeared first on Londes Digital Marketing.

But that doesn’t mean your classic usability and engagement metrics are completely useless.  Even on sophisticated web presences these metrics are useful, while more basic websites may rely more heavily on them.

Bounce Rate is probably the most basic engagement metric.  Everyone has heard about it.  A lot of people have a general understanding.  Less really understand it, and even fewer know why, where, and when we should be concerned with it.

So, let’s learn all about bounce rates.

We’ll go over the basics, then I’ll take you through an analysis of the LDM Website to show you the kind of information you can get just from monitoring bounce rates.

What is Bounce Rate?

Bounce rate is the percentage of visitors who view one page on your website and leave without any interaction.  For most basic websites, this just means they viewed one page and left.

If you have event tracking (hovers, video views, button clicks), if users interact with one of them before leaving, it doesn’t count as a bounce.

Bounce Rate in Google Analytics

Finding the overall site bounce rate in Google analytics is a pretty simple exercise.  It’s actually right in the default area.  On the right side of the navigation (in the 2013 version of Google Analytics), in the “Audience” section you can click on “Overview.”  Which, as I said, is where you are as soon as you log in.

Ours is 51.26%.  Someone might call that acceptable.  Most bounce rates are between 35%-55%, depending on a number of factors.  But I don’t care at all about the number, and you shouldn’t either.  I’ll tell you why.

It’s more useful to look at bounce rate as a page metric, rather than a website metric.  Asking “what is my website bounce rate?” is a bad question.  It’s also very frequently asked.  The answer to that questions is this:

“It’s complicated.”

I like to say “it’s complicated” because saying “that’s the worthless question” or “who cares” isn’t a great way to make friends.  The better question is “what does the bounce rate mean on a certain page based on the traffic that is landing there?”

Bounce rate isn’t just a measure of page engagement effectiveness.  It’s also an indicator of visitor quality.

Bounce Rate by Traffic Source

Let’s jump back in Google Analytics for a moment.  Under “Traffic Sources” choose the “Sources” drop-down, and select “All Traffic.”  You’ll see a list of the different websites and mediums driving traffic to your website.  Ours is pictured below (I removed a few columns so you can concentrate on bounce rate):

Now this is more interesting information.  Instead of trying to judge the quality of my website based on bounce rate, I’d rather judge the quality of the traffic based on bounce rate.  It’s better to look at the type of visitor I’m getting from relevant places, and judge accordingly.

LinkedIn visitors are viewing our profile or company and coming to check us out.  A 13% bounce rate is great, but it isn’t really that surprising.  Visitors from Google+ are likely viewing a blog or resource we produced to increase their knowledge.  In general, they read it and leave.  So the 86% bounce rate, while high, isn’t entirely surprising either (although I’d like it to be lower)

Bounce Rate by Organic Landing Page

Since bounce rate is a page metric, we can take a look at its value on each page.  I decided to take a look at ours by landing page.  In order to do that, go to Traffic Sources -> Search -> Organic.  In the “secondary dimension” section of the main viewing area, select Landing Page.  This will segment organic traffic by the page that the user clicks on in the search engine to view your website.

When our home page ranks and people click to visit us, we’ve got a 10.84% bounce rate.  Pretty good.  I’m going to save you the process, but most of these search terms are branded searches, and digital marketing agency searches (and tons of those darn “not provided” searches).  So it’s not really that surprising.

Same thing goes for the SEO page.  0% bounce rate.  Even better.

But look at all the URL’s that start with “ldm-blog”.  Blogs have a higher bounce rate.  That makes sense.  They find our resource, maybe this one, by searching for “Learn about bounce rates”.  They read the article, and they leave.  Of course we’d rather they didn’t, but you can expect a higher bounce rate.

I created some advanced segments in a custom organic dashboard and found these bounce rates for blog traffic vs. non-blog traffic:

As I was saying regarding the difference between Google+ and LinkedIn, the organic traffic backs it up as well.  If you have a blog full of specific resources, your bounce rate on those pages is going to be higher.

So what is the website bounce rate?

I think you can tell how I start to answer this question.  If you’d like, I’d love to answer it in even greater detail for your website (check out our web analytics consulting services).

Understand the type of visitors that are coming to your website, make smarter usability assessments, and establish reasonable goals based on them.  The more you are able to segment users and analyze usability data, the better you’ll be able to use your data.

How can you use segmented bounce rate data?

I’ll help simplify this process a little bit more for you.  Let’s look at a basic Type 1 / Type 2 error chart that maps out the customers you want, versus the customers that are going to your website.  By segmenting users and observing bounce rates (and your other basic usability metrics if you want), we can identify what action should be taken to optimize your web presence.

Our graphic designer is busy.  But you’re in luck.  I know how to use paintbrush.

Why Do Users Bounce?

I’m going to simplify why users bounce into 1 of 2 very broad categories.

1. The visitor is not in your target market (low visitor quality – they are not a perspective buyer)

This group is represented by the right column in the customer chart above.  You don’t want to work with this customer.  There’s absolutely no way this customer is going to buy anything from you or use your service.  Maybe they have no interest at all, the price could be too high, you might specialize in something else, etc.  Whatever it is, this type of visit is really just wasting everyone’s time and money.

Why it’s a problem:

Wasting company time: Think of it like calling up our company and asking if we have any SEO packages for $10/month.

Wasting advertising budget: If you are running a paid campaign to drive this traffic, or investing in SEO, then you’re wasting money attracting these visits.

Why it might not be a problem:

Before our website was a digital marketing agency, it used to be a collectable card game website.  We occasionally still get people looking for that old site, or visitors clicking old links that no longer exist and are redirected to our home page (at no cost to us).

Quite frankly, I don’t care when these people bounce.  They aren’t looking for digital marketing services, so it’s acceptable that my bounce rate is a little higher due to visitors like this.  Does it make our overall bounce rate look worse?  Sure.  But it really doesn’t matter to the business.

2. Your landing page is lousy

In consultations, I would recommend going with “doesn’t appeal to the tastes or preferences of the user.”

These visitors are represented by the left side of the above chart.  Despite the lousy website, if they’re still happy to work with you, they won’t bounce and you’re in good shape.  But sometimes, they do bounce (or in a broader sense, abandon your conversion funnel).

This is where it’s a real problem.  If the people you’re driving to your website are customers that you actually want, you need to convert them.  Whether it’s poor design quality, confusing navigation, or poor messaging, you’ve got to get you website fixed up so people stay.  Targeted visitors abandoning a website is one of the most overlooked ROI losses, so checking bounce rate on targeted visitors to increase engagement is vital.

What can you do about it?

Figure out why your website isn’t resonating with your target market.  Maybe your website looks cheap, but you’re a premium service provider charging higher rates.  That count lead to a disproportionate number of upper-right box errors, wasting your time.  Maybe your design and presentation is fine, but your call to action is not compelling.  What you’ve got to do is test alternatives.

I’m not saying you need a redesign.  Try a different call to action.  Feature a different product.  Test a different headline.  Evaluate your navigation and make sure your headers are appropriate.  Get important content above the fold.

Test different alternatives to try to gain the interest of your target market when they visit the website.  Lead them directly where they want to go, engage their visit, and lead them through the conversion funnel.  If you can’t catch their interest, you’re bounce to lose a lot of customers.

Should you hire a web analytics specialist?

Some people are probably reading this thinking I’m making a mountain of a mole hill.  For many small businesses, there’s some truth to that.  After all, it took me 1800 words and 5 diagrams to give you a proper introduction to bounce rates.  Some small businesses might just benefit from looking at bounce rates on their major pages and trying to reduce them to get a few conversions.  It isn’t worth hiring someone to analyze it.  There just isn’t a big enough pay-off.

But if you’re managing a marketing budget, this stuff is important.  Detailed segmenting is and smart analysis can turn companies into industry leaders.  Better segmenting, maximizing efficiency, allocating budgets effectively, and understanding user behavior are integral to obtaining and maintaining a competitive advantage.

If you decided to work with us, you can bet we take detailed looks at your web presence and carefully analyze all the useful information we can to make your business more effective.  If you’re interested in discussing what we might be able to do for you in more detail, contact us today and we’ll go over how we might be able to help.

The post Website Bounce Rate Analytics: Using Google Analytics to Understand User Segments appeared first on Londes Digital Marketing.