Google AdSense Guide: increase earnings and escape low CPC

30-second summary:

  • There are many factors that affect your AdSense performance right from content quality, ad placements, media selection, and so on
  • High traffic doesn’t directly indicate high earnings, in fact, some of your practices may be equivalent to handing out money to your competition
  • Here are six informed steps to help you earn more from AdSense

Throughout this guide, you’ll learn how to increase your Google AdSense earnings by making some very simple changes and by following a few simple tips. In my personal experience, this can help skyrocket your AdSense CPC and results can increase your AdSense earnings by more than five times.

Your aim and objective throughout should be to gradually increase your AdSense CPC and CTR little by little and by following these simple tips you are bound to see results.

Don’t forget to keep on testing and your AdSense earnings will surely increase over time. Just don’t give up quickly!

1. Content is king on the internet and also on AdSense

The reason content is placed at the top of all the other tips is because it is the single most important rule to follow on your journey through SEO and internet marketing. It is the first thing your visitors, advertisers, and bots (ad bots and crawl bots) will notice after coming to your webpage.

If you are providing your users with low quality or outdated content, Google will rate your website much lower and your CPC (the bids advertisers make to appear on your website) will greatly fall. This can also get you smart-priced, even if you generate quality traffic on low-quality content.

So remember, always provide your readers and visitors with something unique and worthwhile which will actually acknowledge rather than something which has already been posted on a thousand other websites.

2. Ad sizes and placements are decisive

Do not neglect the placement and size of your Google AdSense ads as they play an important into delivering a better user experience and thus, improving your AdSense earnings.

“While creating ad sizes and placements, user experience and ad viewability should be the center focus”, explained SEO expert Boris Dzhingarov, in an email interview.

“Some placements and ad sizes will disrupt users, particularly if they’re covering content. Others, however, will fail miserably as the users never see them leading to a decrease in AdSense revenues”, he added.

So the question now is: where should you place your ad and which of Google’s display ad sizes are best for your business? The answer is pretty simple, place two ads inside your blog posts (or content) and one outside the post. Keep one 336 x 280 large rectangle ad on the top of the blog post just below the title and place the second ad in the middle of the blog post as a 468 x 60 sized banner. The remaining unit can be placed to the right of your post inside your sidebar.

Position your AdSense ad units as such to not annoy your visitors by popping right in their faces. Instead, perfectly fit inside your content, or in positions that you aim to get more clicks from.

For example, a site that provides file downloads can have an AdSense Ad Unit right near the download link to get a High CTR.

3. Monitor and limit the use of AdSense ad units

Have you tried limiting the use of your AdSense ad units? The biggest difference I myself have noticed is that by reducing the ad units which had the lowest CTR you can quickly and easily increase your AdSense CPC.

What usually happens is if you don’t have enough content to support all the ad units is that lower-paying ads start showing on your websites. This may increase your click-through rate (CTR) and bring in more clicks but because the ads may not be relevant to your website (public advertisements). This results in your CPC falling and your AdSense earnings decreasing. If you are increasing your ad units ultimately you are making it easier for advertisers to be shown on your website meaning an even lower CPC (because of low bids).

Remove the low CTR ad units and replace them with the higher paying ad units which have a higher CTR and your earnings will rise automatically.

Trying these tips for a couple of days will make you notice a real improvement and an important increase in low AdSense CPC.

Google AdSense Custom Channels will be necessary to keep track of things. This will give you a precise and clear idea of the best-performing ad slots. Measure the CTR, CPC, CPM, and earning of every ad unit.

Create custom channels for every ad slot and monitor their performance for at least two weeks to get an idea of things. If you keep changing ad units too often without testing them thoroughly you might get inaccurate results and miss out on better opportunities by placing your ads elsewhere.

How this is going to help in increasing your AdSense CPC?

Remove the low-performing ad units from your website (Compare CTR and final earnings of different units). Google should now serve better ads to other remaining ad slots which are performing well, so your earnings and CPC will increase.

4. Enable both text and image, media-rich ads

Always enable both text and image ads on your websites. Never limit your ad visibility to ‘Only image/media-rich ads’ or ‘Only text ads’ as this will lower the bids for advertisers to appear on your website. This directly means low AdSense CPC.

If you enable ‘Both text and image ads’ AdSense will automatically show the ad with the highest bid on your website which means a higher CPC for you.

In short, the more advertisers that are bidding to appear on your website the higher your AdSense CPC will be.

5. Keywords, keywords, and more keywords!

Try researching to find keywords with ‘High AdSense CPC’ and a ‘High Search Volume’. Searched globally using the Google Adwords keyword tool. Search, search and search some more to find specific keywords which have low competition, high CPC, and high search traffic.

After researching you can start creating your website pages, blog posts, and articles on such high-value keywords. Always use these keywords naturally at the beginning, the middle, and the end of your content. It is also very useful to add them to your headings or tags.

Try not to bother with keywords that pay a few cents and those that have a low CPM. Ideally, I would recommend grabbing keywords with a CPC higher than $2.50.

This should be the most important part of your mission. You would never want a page that earns one dollar from five to 10 clicks. Rather you want a page that pulls an impressive four to five dollars out of just two ad clicks, or maybe even $40 dollars out of just eight clicks!

If you don’t concentrate on your keywords, even if you have a lot of traffic you will be wasting it and not earning a substantial amount. Imagine this as handing out money to your own competition! By targeting the right keywords you can make a lot more with a lot less traffic.

Research on the Google keyword tool today and increase your Adsense CPC and earnings.

6. Reduce fraud, accidental, and useless clicks

Do you have an ad unit placed near the top of your content that gets a high CTR? Can this also be because of the awkward location that some people end up clicking on your ad by mistake? When this happens, the visitors often back out or close the ad. This is counted by Google as either an accidental or fraud click.

You may temporarily get earnings from these clicks but they will most probably be reverted due to the low-quality nature of the click.

So always try to minimize any accidental or useless clicks on your AdSense ad units and NEVER ask your friends or family to click on your ads!


Jacob M. is a copywriter, marketing blogger, inbound marketing consultant, and founder of Write Minds. He can be found on Twitter @jmcmillen89.

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https://www.searchenginewatch.com/2021/11/25/google-adsense-guide-increase-earnings-and-escape-low-cpc/




Five hacks to enhance your organic CTR and rankings in SERPs

30-second summary:

  • Issues with increasing your site’s organic traffic may be attributed to low organic CTRs.
  • Creative title tags helps your site create a positive first impression.
  • Limit your meta description to under 160 characters to avoid truncation.
  • A well-optimized, keyword-rich URL can increase organic CTRs by 45%.
  • Leverage the power of rich results to steal SERP real estate from your competitors.

Appearing in Google search engine results pages (SERPs) is a must-have for any business looking to further their online presence and increase their market share. But if your goal is to grow your website traffic or increase sales, merely appearing on the first page isn’t enough. With Google progressively changing from a search engine into an answer engine, more and more search users are completing their search without leaving the SERPs. To win in today’s zero-click era, it’s become paramount for businesses to occupy more real estate in SERPs and be more visually engaging to search users. If your website is having little luck with increasing its organic traffic, your troubles may be attributed to low organic click-through-rates (CTR). Improving click-through performance is an essential facet of ensuring long-term online success, both on and off Google. 

So what can you do to improve your site’s organic CTR?

Whether you run an e-commerce shop, operate a cooking blog, or manage your client’s site, these five well-tested CTR enhancing techniques will positively boost your organic CTRs, driving more targeted traffic to your site.

And the best part? All of these techniques are easily actionable and are all within your control.

Let’s get started.

1. Get creative with your title tags

A traditional organic SERP listing has three main elements:

Headline: A blue clickable link that denotes the title of the page.

Description: A brief snippet of what contents can be found on the page.

URL: The internet address of a specific web resource.

Your search listing’s title tag (the headline) has significant importance to both the search engine and its users. As an HTML element, search engines use your title tag to understand better the information contained within the page.

Search visitors, on the other hand, use the title tag found in SERPs to make a first impression about your business. Because it’s displayed in a prominent blue color, how you craft your title tag can be a make-or-break factor in its clickability, impacting organic CTR.

But search results aren’t the only places where title tags are used. Because the <title> tag element is found in your page’s HTML code, your title is also displayed at the top of your web browser’s tab and when your content is shared across social media networks.

So how should you write title tags to make them irresistible to search visitors?

Here are five fundamentals to apply to your title tag writing

Aim for a title tag length of 35-55 characters

According to research performed by Backlinko, title tags between 15 and 40 characters have the highest CTR. A title this short, however, can provide a challenge – how do you fit your keywords in and make the title tag compelling? 

In my experience, the sweet spot for a title tag is 35-55 characters in length. A length in that range keeps the title tag short and punchy and ensures it does not truncate in search results, which generally happens at around 60 characters or 600 pixels.  

Use tools like SERP Simulator and SERP Preview Tool to check title tag length.

Place your primary keyword closer to the beginning

Frontloading your title tag with your target keyword increases that keyword’s prominence, giving more weight to its importance. Plus, most users typically only see the first two words of any given headline. Placing your keyword at the beginning helps to make the keyword more obvious, and thus appear more relevant to users scanning the SERPs.

Never keyword stuff

While keyword placement is essential, avoid titles that are just filled with irrelevant keywords or variations of your target keyword. Title tags stuffed full of keywords are unappealing to search users and are CTR killers.  

Add emphasis on capitalization

Capitalizing the first letter of every word in your title tag is general copywriting best practice. To make your title tag stand out even more and add emphasis to high-impact words, consider capitalizing the occasional odd word.

Minimize the use of stop words

Stop words like “a”, “the”, “on”, “or”, and, “etc.”, can add unnecessary length to your already restricted character limit. To better position your title tag, use high impact, power words like best, exclusive, insane, and so on.

Once you’ve mastered the art of title-tag writing, it’s time to move on to the next step.

2. Meta descriptions

The snippet below the headline in the SERPs is commonly (but not always) pulled from your page’s meta description. In addition, an HTML element, the purpose of a meta description is to summarize a web page’s content.

And like your page title tag, a well-written meta description can positively influence CTRs. 

These 155 characters can influence 43% of search users to click on your site. And with nine out of ten search users clicking on organic search results vs paid advertisement, meta descriptions are your opportunity to draw some attention to your site.

How to write the perfect meta description

When it comes to writing the most compelling meta description for search results, start by researching SERPs. Having oversight on what your competitors are doing will help you better assess what descriptions are click-worthy among your target audience.

Here’s a quick checklist you can use to ensure your meta description is highly clickable:

  • Stick to Google’s optimal length

To optimize your meta description, be sure to keep the page’s summary under 160 characters and 130 characters for mobile searches. 

  • Add your most important keywords

Be sure to include your target keyword(s) in the description so they get highlighted in bold within search results.

  • Write descriptive copy

To further create snippets that entice search users to click, avoid generic descriptions as much as possible.

  • Don’t duplicate descriptions 

The pages of your site should have unique meta descriptions. Duplicating descriptions can cause Google to penalize your site.

  • Include a call-to-action
  • To add value to your description and entice more clicks, write your description with advertising in mind. 

If you have a lot of pages on your site, just focus on optimizing the most important pages. Why is this you would ask? 

Because Google ignores the meta description tag for 63% of queries. Focussing your efforts on pages getting little SERP visibility is not worth the time, especially when Google’s descriptions perform equally well, and sometimes better than custom descriptions.

Now that title tags and meta descriptions have been addressed, it’s time to turn our attention to URLs.

3. Use descriptive URLs

The third element of a traditional search listing is your page URL. And studies have shown that a well-optimized, keyword-rich URL can increase organic CTRs by 45%.

After all, when it comes to URLs in search results, wouldn’t you prefer to click on example.com/blog/ten-tips-for-seo-success rather than example.com/index.php?=5754225=t44=?p=987?

So what are the steps necessary to craft click-worthy SEO-friendly URLs?

The first step is to include the exact keyword you’d like to target in your URL.

When writing out your URL, avoid using special characters, stop words, and numbers. Special characters like the ampersand or “&” and numbers are best suited for your page title tag or header tag. Be sure also to only use lowercase letters and hyphens to separate words rather than underscores.

Lastly, keep your URL length short. Some studies have shown there is a correlation between shorter URLs and higher rankings. The average URL length of top-ten ranking pages is 66 characters.

Now that you grasp the basic SERP strategies to increase CTR performance let’s take a look at two advanced techniques you can start using on your site.

4. Turn your title tag donkeys into CTR unicorns

While it may be tempting to simply write a title tag and forget it, to get the very best results from your organic listing, you need to constantly optimize your title tags. As Larry Kim shows, this requires testing new variations and measuring their performance. 

The best way to fully optimize your title tags is to determine your site’s worst performers. These title tags we’ll call your donkeys. The best way to assess which title tags are underperforming is by going to Google Search Console and downloading your query data.

Once you have your query data, plot a graph that compares your Click-Through-Rates vs. Average Position for any queries you rank for in organic search. Add a trend line to your graph.

Now that you have your graph, target the keywords below the graph’s curve. These are your site’s biggest donkeys, the pages with the highest number of impressions but deliver lower than expected CTR for their ranking position.

To maximize your efforts, rather than testing new title tags and comparing their performance over time, consider doing some Google Ads “blitz testing.”

Blitz testing requires you to create a set of ads for the page you’re optimizing and testing at least 10 different headlines. 10 headlines are the bare minimum for blitz testing because it gives you a better chance at finding the headline that resonates best with your audience.

When you find your statistical unicorn from the Google Ads test, use that headline as your title tag on your re-optimized page.

The last hack we’ll be looking at will not only bring more visibility to your listing, but it has also been shown to bring in 2.7x more traffic from organic search.

5. Rich results

Leveraging the power of rich snippets allows your listing to occupy more SERP real estate and improve the visual elements of your SERP result, helping your site increase its organic CTR while satisfying search intent.

To experience success with rich snippets from organic search, it pays to know the most common schema types. While there are dozens of different rich snippets available, not every single one can be adapted for your business. Some are event industry-specific like flight information.

The most common schema types that will work for the majority of businesses competing in the SERPs include:

  • Review snippets: Displays a star and numeric rating below the meta description.
  • Recipe rich data snippet: Provides a step-by-step overview of a specific recipe.
  • How-To snippets: Provides step-by-step instructions for a specific task.
  • Sitelinks: Adds navigational links to key pages on your site below the meta description.
  • Search box snippet: Displays your site’s internal search box within SERPs.
  • Product snippet: Displays product information (price, reviews, stock availability) in SERPs.
  • Video snippet: Displays video information (thumbnail URL, upload date, transcript, etc.) in SERPs.
  • FAQ snippet: Presents commonly-asked questions and answers in the search results.

Now that you have a clearer understanding of the type of rich snippets available to you, follow this seven-step process to publish structured data onto your site:

  • Visit Google’s Structured Data Markup Helper.
  • Select the snippet type you’d like to create.
  • Paste your URL or HTML source to the markup helper.
  • Highlight the page elements you want to be included in the structured data.
  • Click the Create HTML button.
  • Copy and paste your generated structured data onto your page HTML.
  • Preview and test your new rich snippet in Google’s Rich Results Test.

Once you run your test, your schema markup will create a report that states the eligibility of your rich snippet. The information will also show any issues or warnings that will need to be fixed before your page can be published.

It should be noted, though, that having validated structured data in your page’s code doesn’t automatically guarantee that your search listing will display a rich snippet. Google will always provide the search user with the best search experience which, at times, may not require a rich snippet.

Now it’s your turn

By using the strategies above, your site can start to experience more organic traffic. This can significantly contribute to greater overall online success and, ultimately, increased site conversions. What’s more, the strategies provided here increase site traffic without creating more content or building more links.

With organic click-through-rates already on the decline, adapting these tips and tactics to your site will allow your brand to remain competitive in the current zero-click search landscape.

And the best part? All of the strategies mentioned here can also be used by any business, regardless of SEO experience or marketing budget.

Karl Tablante is Inbound Marketing Manager at SEO Sherpa.

Five hacks to enhance your organic CTR and rankings in SERPs




B2B paid search forecast: What to expect in 2021

30-second summary:

  • Google surprised marketers with a few changes in 2020 – an updated search query report, new ad extensions, and new audience targeting, to name a few — which forced advertisers to adjust their SEM strategies and tactics in order to maintain or increase their ROI.
  • B2B advertisers are testing and investing in different campaign types besides the traditional search and display campaigns, and are seeing good performance with Discovery Campaigns.
  • In the wake of the changes Google made to the search query report in September, Dynamic Search Ads can complement existing search campaigns and improve CTR, CPC, and ROAS.
  • Expect to see higher adoption of auction-time bidding, dynamic extensions, and dynamic search ads.

2020 was a tough year for many industries, but for the B2B industry, demand remained strong. Paid search budgets increased in many cases, as B2B companies invested more in digital marketing. The end of Q1 hurt performance, but things started to normalize in Q2, and we observed the usual seasonality the rest of the year.

In addition to the pandemic, Google also surprised us with a few changes – an updated search query report, new ad extensions, and new audience targeting, to name a few. All such changes forced advertisers to adjust their SEM strategies and tactics in order to maintain or increase their ROI.

After an eventful 2020, here are 6 PPC trends B2B advertisers should watch in 2021:

1. SEM campaigns diversify 

Given the high competition in the B2B space, advertisers need to differentiate themselves in order to get their target audience’s attention and drive demand. B2B advertisers are testing and investing in different campaign types besides the traditional search and display campaigns. B2B advertisers are seeing a good performance with Discovery Campaigns – with CTR higher than display, and CPL more efficient than search – so we expect them to increase their investment in this campaign type in 2021.

Quick tip

When launching Discovery Campaigns, be patient. Let them run for a couple of weeks without making changes as the bidding algorithm is learning during that period and you will see fluctuations in all metrics. After that, you can prioritize the audiences that are performing well. Performance improves consistently after 4-5 weeks of launch.

2. Dynamic Search Ads (DSA) gain in popularity

DSA campaigns will become even more popular with B2B advertisers after the changes Google made to the search query report in September 2020. Now that the report includes only terms that a significant number of users searched for, and with advertisers losing visibility into low-volume keywords that drive traffic and can generate leads, DSA campaigns offer an efficient way to find new keywords. Their search query reports can help reveal gaps in keyword coverage. DSA can complement your existing search campaigns and improve CTR, CPC, and ROAS.

Quick tip

For lead generation accounts that have strict lead and CPL goals, create separate campaigns for DSA so you have more control over the budget. Start by targeting your SEM landing pages so you can have some control over potential queries and headlines.

3. PPC managers embrace automation

More B2B advertisers are using automation tools and machine learning in order to improve performance, increase efficiency, and save time. Some of our favorite automated features – automated bidding strategies, responsive search ads, and the optimize ad rotation in Google Ads – will continue to gain popularity in 2021. We should also expect to see higher adoption of auction-time bidding, dynamic extensions, and dynamic search ads as B2B advertisers seek to optimize and scale their paid search campaigns.

Quick tip

When evaluating automated bidding strategies for lead generation accounts, don’t worry about higher CPCs as you will likely be paying more for higher quality clicks. If you are seeing a high volume of leads at a low CPL, you are going in the right direction. And always set your target CPA based on the last 30 days’ average, even if it is higher than your goal. Otherwise, you will see a decrease in lead volume.

4. YouTube ad investment increases

Online video ads have become more important for B2B marketers during COVID-19 times. B2B buyers are using online video ads more often to inform purchase decisions: 64% of B2B buyers have increased their use of online video and 51% have increased their use of search, according to eMarketer.  We expect B2B advertisers to increase their YouTube investment in 2021 and to launch video campaigns both to generate brand awareness and to generate leads. In addition, B2B advertisers will invest more in creating video content — and YouTubes’ new betas will make that content easier to create.

Quick tip

For a full-funnel video strategy, prioritize videos that are 6-, 15- and 30-seconds long as short videos engage users the most. Also, avoid salesy videos and try to create videos that show the personality of your brand so you can connect with your audience.

5. Mobile investment drops

Lower mobility driven by COVID-19 has decreased the number of mobile buyers while increasing time in front of computers, leading to strong desktop growth. During the pandemic, paid search desktop traffic is up 60%, while mobile traffic has dropped 7% compared to the pre-COVID period. Moreover, the conversion rate for desktop has increased by 4% while the conversion rate for mobile decreased by almost 19%. 

Quick tip

Leverage automated bidding strategies to save time and prioritize the devices that are performing best. And don’t forget to look at the assisted conversions report when evaluating mobile performance if you are still using last-click attribution.

6. Paid search messaging becomes increasingly customer-centric

B2B buyers are looking for new solutions as they accelerate purchases, and are expecting more from their solution providers according to the 2020 B2B Buyer Behavior Study. So, we’ll see more ads from B2B companies highlighting features, functionality, customer support services, product training, and implementation support in order to attract and engage B2B buyers. For successful SEM campaigns, promoting relevant content that speaks to industry needs will be a must.

Quick tip

If you have lead generation campaigns and prefer to drive traffic to a landing page with a form, use site links and callouts to highlight the additional services or training you have available for your customers.

With new campaign types and messaging to test, and more automation features and tools at hand, 2021 promises to be fun for B2B advertisers.

Lucia Rodas-Estrada is Senior Search Director at Merkle | DWA.

B2B paid search forecast: What to expect in 2021




Research insights: Role of featured snippets in website traffic boost

30-second summary:

  • Featured snippets account for a 35.1% share of all clicks.
  • The featured snippet and knowledge panel SERP give a better click-through rate together.
  • Users click on featured snippets that seem “informative”.
  • Users who prefer the regular search results listings don’t click on featured snippets.
  • “People also ask” boxes are an unpopular choice showing the lowest amount of clicks.
  • 24% of users consider a featured snippet as an ‘Ad’ and don’t click on it.

Featured snippets are probably the first thing people see when they perform a search query. Acquiring the position ‘zero’ on the SERPs, the featured snippets dominate the page and immediately capture the attention of the viewer. 

However, does it make an impact on the visitor? Do the featured snippets get more clicks when compared to the top results? How does the audience perceive them?

To answer these questions and more, we at Engine Scout recently conducted a study and analyzed how featured snippets influence searchers’ behavior and overall experience. 

The methodology applied for the featured snippet study

In our study on featured snippets, we collected data from 3552 testers, who were asked to look at four different SERPs with snippets. They were required to make a search on Google related to a specific keyword and make a selection from the results.

To collect an unbiased opinion, featured snippets were not mentioned anywhere in the survey.

There were three choices for the testers to choose from: Ads, featured snippets, and regular result listing.

They were later asked which section they clicked on to estimate the Click-through rate (CTR). 

Featured snippets - sections

What is a featured snippet and how does it boost website traffic?

The featured snippet is a summarized extract from a post that answers the user’s ‘search query‘ most accurately. It is placed above all the Google search result listings, occupying position zero.

This means no matter what your website’s ranking for a certain post if Google chooses a featured snippet from your post, it will appear on the top.

According to Ahrefs, it is 99.58% true that Google will only consider your content for a featured snippet if it is already ranking on Page #1. The other 0.42% pages that Google considers account for their ‘People also ask’ box SERP feature. This feature only receives a total of 6% click shares, for the same reason.

The ‘concise and direct‘ nature of these featured snippets motivates users to click on them. According to our study, they account for 35.1% of all clicks which translates to getting ‘extra traffic‘ to your website. 

Optimizing a post to rank for a featured snippet can be tricky. Any content can be worthy of becoming a ‘Featured-Snippet,’ including a paragraph, a list, table, or even a video.

Try these three quick strategies to win more featured snippets that get clicks to your website.

1. Include direct answers to a search query in a paragraph snippet

Paragraph snippets account for 82% of the total featured snippets.

These snippets give the most relevant response to a query in a paragraph form. They usually also display a pertinent image alongside or above the text.

Here is an example of how Google shows a paragraph snippet when asked about ‘What is SERP?

2. Make the best use of keywords in your paragraph

Attaining the first rank in Google for a keyword requires quite an effort. 

Enriching your optimized content for featured snippets with the right keywords increases your chances of that ‘Position Zero‘ in the SERP.

Try to include question-oriented keywords in your content. People find search results with keywords resonating with their question as “trustworthy” and “informative.” This is the primary reason why they prefer a featured snippet over all other organic results.

Take a close look at your competitor’s featured snippets for some inspiration. Make a list of keywords that have triggered a featured snippet for them, and make your content surrounded by these keywords.

Several online tools can lessen your workload by retrieving information and keywords from the competition’s snippets. You can use them if you find it time-consuming to manually optimize your content for featured snippets.

3. Include a knowledge panel in your content marketing strategy

A box with information relevant to a search query appearing on SERP’s right panel is called a Knowledge Panel

It only appears when the search is about an entity, for example, business, person, or location. The information inside this box lets the reader know about the entity and gives them a way to reach out to it.

Featured snippet alone offers a close competition to the organic listing for the total click share. 

But pages ranking for both the featured snippet and the knowledge panel outperform the organic listings for the CTR. A double featured snippet leaves behind the CTR of organic listings, getting 42.1% of the total click share.

Therefore, it is an added benefit if you strategize your featured snippet to trigger a knowledge panel. 

For reference, check out this post to see how Gennaro Cuofano structured his featured snippet with his Amazon author page reference. Google considered this reference and used it to display a knowledge panel alongside his featured snippet.

The other side of the story

Featured snippets can sometimes work opposite to their intent.

According to our study, 24% of users confuse featured snippets for Ads.

Featured snippets and how people confuse them for an ad

Therefore, merely optimizing content to target the featured snippet doesn’t ensure a high CTR.

Google keeps altering its interface to make the Ad label on the paid search results barely noticeable. 

As featured snippets also acquire the top position on SERPs, it is very natural for someone to get confused and not click them.

According to Dr. Pete Meyers, the Marketing Scientist at Moz:

“The lesson for SEOs is that we can’t just target a feature — we need to understand query intent, what our buyers expect from that feature, and how they perceive that feature.”

Try to make your content look like a straightforward, quick answer to a query with images for references to appear very different from an ad.

Wrap up

Google introduced the featured snippet to make it easy for searchers to find relevant answers quickly. With voice search technology becoming a common search tool for half of the smartphone users,  featured snippets catered to the trend and enabled users to read the answer out loud.

To make Google identify your content worthy to pick snippets from, you have to optimize your content so it’s relevant and appropriate for voice search SEO, so it helps to bring in more traffic to your site. 

Jonathan Gorham is Co-Founder at Engine Scout Digital Marketing. He can be found on LinkedIn.

Research insights: Role of featured snippets in website traffic boost




How to become a master of featured snippets

30-second summary:

  • Featured snippets are here to stay, so it’s time for you to adapt.
  • 65% of organic Google searches now include at least one rich snippet.
  • Ranking for them isn’t as difficult as you think.
  • There is a structured and repeatable process for gaining those positions.
  • Ahref’s Mark Webster shows you how to analyze and create featured snippets.

The trick is being able to get featured snippets is using a structured process. One that you can repeat over and over again. Which is exactly what we show you how to do in this blog post. But just before we go any further into how to do that, let’s do a quick brief on featured snippets.

What is a featured snippet?

Featured snippets are the images, content summaries, answers, widgets, or other data that Google displays in their SERPs in addition to traditional web results.

featured snippets

From Google’s point of view, these provide their “customers” with better user experience – they get the information they need without ever needing to actually go to a website. And an improved revenue model for them – paid ads are how Google keeps the lights on.

But it’s a different story for website owners and bloggers. Featured snippets can feel like a mammoth task. But you don’t have to feel that way.

Why are featured snippets important?

There’s a straightforward answer to this – Google has increased its use of featured snippets in the last 12 months.

This is a trend that does not look set to change anytime soon.

If anything, Google will double-down on this approach, treading the fine line between scraping your content (without paying for it) and rewarding you with enough traffic to continue publishing.

There was even a time when you could grab the featured snippet and the numero uno ranking for a given keyword.

So you could effectively rank for position zero and position one. Which obviously drove insane amounts of traffic.

But then Google went and changed its algorithm to terminate “spot zero” rankings, and SEOs went back to the drawing board. The point we’re making is how your visitors interact with your website has changed dramatically.

But this also provides you with an opportunity.

As you probably already know, grabbing the first position result in Google SERPs will give you a CTR of at least 31.7% for a given search query. That’s why SEOs push so hard to dominate that particular slot in the organic SERPs.

But what if we told you that a competing featured snippet gets way more clicks you should get. There is hope, though.

Because around 60% of all featured snippets are owned by sites that don’t hold position one or that keyword. Basically, as long as you rank somewhere on page one it’s simply a matter of reverse engineering how to grab the featured snippet for that result. And yes, we’ve got you covered.

Analyzing the competition

As has been the case with most aspects of SEO over the last few years you should analyze what your competitors are doing.

So, the Authority Hacker team analyzed over one million search results for commonalities in the “how” and “why” of rich snippets.

Our criteria were that we included all types of featured snippets, including YouTube, People Also Ask, Knowledge cards, and more. And we also only analyzed phrases that had at least 1,000 searches per month.

What we found is that anywhere up to 65% of all search results included a snippet of some kind.

Basically, if you’re not optimizing for these rich/featured snippets, I can pretty much guarantee that your competitors are.

Finding featured snippet gaps

Let’s say you rank on page one for your keyword of choice. It typically takes a lot of links and a lot of work to kick down the door to position one. But snagging a featured snippet can help you leapfrog your competitors.

Quick reminder: You have to already rank somewhere on page one for our tactic to work.

With that in mind, head on over to Ahrefs.

Click on ‘Site Explorer’, paste in the URL of your website, click the search icon, and then click on ‘Organic Keywords’.

analyzing featured snippets using ahrefs

Now, filter the results so you only see what pages already rank on the first page of the SERPs.

filter results to find organic keywords for featured snippets

And the final step is to look for the gaps i.e. keywords you already rank for but where you don’t own the featured snippet.

To do that click on ‘SERP Features’ and select ‘Featured snippet” and ‘Apply’.

applying a feature snippet using ahrefs

Here’s what the results look like:

results in ahrefs

Now you know exactly what keyword phrases to target for your next featured snippet conquest.

And yes, you could do all of this manually.

But that’s entirely up to you – Ahrefs is our tool of choice when it comes to this stuff.

How do you get featured snippets?

So now we get to the cool stuff – reverse-engineering the SERPs to snag those premium organic placements.

Remember those commonalities we mentioned a little while back?

Well, what also became apparent during our research is that Google isn’t quite as clever as they’d like you to think they are.

All the talk about using AI and NLP (Natural Language Processing) to determine search results well it’s basically smoke and mirrors.

It all sounds compelling but it’s still basically fluff. Instead, the process they appear to use is far more mechanical in nature.

Our data indicate that they’re using how content is structured and semantic analysis to figure out what should appear as a featured snippet. Which all sounds very complicated, but it isn’t.

What we found is that Google follows some very basic rules when choosing which page to take a featured snippet from.

In effect, they would appear to be giving preference to pages that structure their data in a very specific way:

  1. “How to”, “What is” or “Best x vs. y” queries are your best targets
  2. You should wrap the original search query, verbatim, in an H2 or H3 tag
  3. You should also include an image within your “answer”
  4. You should write 50-ish words (no more than 300 characters) to answer the query

query terms to best target for featured snippets

What you are effectively doing here is over-optimizing for the search query.

So it’s kinda like being back in 2004, for now.

Some will view this tactic as “keyword” stuffing, which I think is maybe a little hyperbolic.

I see it as simply structuring your data in a way that makes Google pay attention to your page.

We’re simply providing you with the information we use to dominate whatever featured snippet we want to.

What you do with that information is entirely up to you.

But just imagine the positive impact this could have on an already successful affiliate site?

Are there any downsides?

As with any SEO “hack”, there is always the likelihood that Google will update its algorithm again, changing the selection criteria.

So – in several month’s time – you might have to adjust your approach to retain your position zero placements.

But the argument I’d make here is that in the meantime you’ll miss out on a lot of free traffic.

Something which your competitors will be more than happy to take the risk on.

For me, this is an opportunity to take advantage of.

And if things change, well I’ll see that as “Que sera sera”.

How to become a master of featured snippets




App store optimization success: Top five KPIs you must measure

30-second summary:

  • Mobile applications have become essential for human life, It has managed to reach every corner of the world, it is used for all kinds of things.
  • There are more than two million mobile apps available in app stores but all of them are not equally successful.
  • App Store Optimization (ASO) is one of the techniques that app owners and developers used to optimize their mobile for keywords.
  • After that, you need to measure campaign success by monitoring some of the KPI.
  • Today we will discuss what KPI you should keep monitor to measure the success of your app optimization campaign.

Across two major app marketplaces, there are already more than two million mobile apps and still counting. Mobile apps have made inroads across all nooks and corners of our daily lives and enterprise operations. But despite all these, not all mobile apps are equally successful, and there is a multitude of apps that struggle to survive as businesses. Perhaps, App Store Optimization (ASO) is something that app creators must consider.

Naturally, app publishers and marketers worldwide consider it extremely important to monitor several metrics concerning user engagement, user retention, and business conversion. Here we will explain the five leading metrics that you need to track for measuring the success of your app in app stores.

1. Discoverability in App Stores

The most important thing for any app to get traction in app marketplaces is to become easily discoverable and visible to the target audience. Whether coming into search results or getting featured or hitting top charts, in one way or the other, your app needs to be discoverable and visible to the audience. This is also the principal objective of App Store Optimization (ASO).

Some metrics to keep track of discoverability of the app include the following.

Keywords ranking

Where in the search result, your app appears against a target keyword refers to your search ranking.

Top charts ranking

The ranking of your app in various top charts by categories or by parameters such as Free, Premium, and others.

Category ranking

Where your app in the respective category ranks refers to the category ranking.

Featured

Whether the app is listed among the top apps featured by the App Store or Play Store.

All these metrics that can easily be tracked can reveal your app’s discoverability in the app marketplaces.

2. Active users

This is one of the most important metrics to measure the traction and engagement of a mobile app. The number of active users for a mobile app directly shows the audience engagement and how it evolves. When this metric shows growth, that means the app is getting more traction. The active user metrics can further be categorized into four metrics as per audience engagement in different time spans.

Daily Active Users (DAU)

This metric refers to the number of users using the app on a particular day.

Average Daily Active Users (ADAU)

The number of users using the app in a single month is divided by the number of days in a month.

Weekly Active Users (WAU)

The number of users using the app in a single week.

Monthly Active Users (MAU)

The number of users using the app in a particular month.

3. Lifetime Value (LTV)

Whether calculated on a monthly, daily, or weekly basis, the number of users hardly gives an idea of the business conversion or the kind of revenue they generate for the app. The Lifetime Value or LTV is the metric that helps measure the gross revenue generated by a user over a period of time. This metric is more closely related to the bottom line of an app and hence is very important.

Though you can easily track user session time on a weekly, daily, or monthly basis and track their CTR and impressions, measuring the business conversion remains difficult. This is where this metric comes as handy as it allows evaluating the total sum outcome of the entire app marketing efforts.

4. User acquisition cost

Another important metric closely related to the bottom line and revenue is the user acquisition cost. Your total marketing budget spent on user acquisition can be divided by the total number of users to get an idea of the cost of acquisition. The metric further can be divided on a monthly and yearly basis and can be seen whether the cost of acquisition is growing or decreasing.

5. Conversion rate

Your app is easily visible and discoverable as per the various visibility metrics we have discussed. Now the question is, does this visibility convert into app downloads. After discovering your app downloads the app, how many of the visitors is a crucial metric to measure the success of your App Store Optimization and app marketing?

Some of the key methods to boost App Store Optimization and conversion include using great app title, engaging app description powered by screenshots, images and video content, app reviews, and app ratings.

App market conversion can be tracked through the important measurement metric called Click-through rate (CTR). The proportion of people who, after landing on your app marketplace snippet clicks to go into the product page, is expressed in percentage, and it is called the conversion rate. It is an unmistakable part of the conversion funnel that app marketers need to monitor on a regular basis.

To improve the conversion rate, fortunately, you have an array of sophisticated A/B testing tools that helps you to evaluate the impact of various aspects of your app listing and accordingly fees helpful suggestions to improve conversion rate.

Conclusion

While these metrics are already well known and are regularly tracked by the app marketers around the world, you need to make sure to use a good analytics engine to track your audience engagement and business conversion more accurately.

Juned Ghanchi is Co-founder of IndianAppDevelopers, a mobile app development company builds iOS and Android mobile apps for startups to big brands. Juned has over a decade of experience across Software consulting, App solutions, and App development.

App store optimization success: Top five KPIs you must measure




How audience insights can improve your campaign’s bottom line

30-second summary:

  • Cross-reference what businesses think their target audience is versus their current reality through Google Analytics .
  • Create mock-up personas that you can target your campaigns towards. 
  • Identify key outlets and niches for where your audience consumes media beyond the narrow focus of the business.
  • Blueclaw’s Online PR Campaign Manager shines a light on how audience insights can catalyze your campaign results for good.

When we build marketing campaigns, we use a number of metrics to measure success, from the extent of coverage and links to the shift in keyword rankings in the SERPs. However, this ultimately glosses over the real purpose of any campaign – how it improves the bottom line.  

Again, this can be interpreted in a myriad of ways from CTR to sales. In this case, we’re going to focus on how getting the campaign in front of the right audience is an important piece of the puzzle in determining success. 

1. Identifying your audience

When identifying your audience, there should be a two-pronged approach. Firstly, there is the audience, or customer, as identified by the brand. As in any business, the brand will have spotted an opportunity in the market and target their products towards that audience. However, this does not necessarily marry with whom their audience ends up being online.  

This can be due to the fact that clientele has changed since the business’s inception while the product has not, or it can be that the strategy is not targeted enough. So the best way to identify the audience is to look at the available data to create a mockup of who you should be marketing towards.  

The Google Analytics way

One way to do this is, of course, through Google Analytics. Through GA you can go to audiences and filter through to create a picture of where the user is coming from. Their age, gender, and location can all help to identify the nature of your campaign, media targets, etc., as well as helping your client adapt their own messaging and better target their core customers. 

The manual way 

Another way to identify the audience is a little more manual. Does the client have email newsletters or other databases of leads? Can you sort through to help build some mock-up personas that can help tailor your own marketing efforts? Use all that is available (and that your client is willing to share) in order to ideate and build campaigns that will lead to those conversions.  

2. Targeting that audience 

We’d all love for content to go viral. But sometimes, no matter the number of links generated, you still have missed a trick. A campaign always needs to make sense for a brand’s messaging as well as have an element of making it newsworthy. How else would you get links? 

And while we answer many of these questions, we may not always take a very focused approach to outreach in the hope of hitting those link/coverage KPIs. Sometimes we put too much emphasis on the quantity versus the quality of those links.  

Example one: Coverage choices

For instance, a link in a trades magazine could mean exponentially more to a client than if they were to get massive coverage (without a link) in a national newspaper. Why? Because at that particular moment in time, your campaign has attracted the attention of the right audience and is more likely to generate a lead or revenue than that one piece of coverage in a national paper.  

Example two: Hazy messaging

Or as another example, in the past year, I’ve worked on a couple of campaigns that went viral and gained links internationally. Amazing, right? Yes, but how did it actually improve the bottom line? Well, in the case of one campaign. Not at all. The reasons for that were two-fold, the messaging was a little hazy for the target audience and the target market didn’t really even cover the story. While the international coverage wasn’t anything to sniff at with the likes of GQ, The Daily Express, and more covering the story, it failed to get traction in the US.  

The other campaign, Film Franchise Showdown, the messaging was better because it targeted the correct audience. For an iGaming client, the audience will invariably skew male and younger, but not too young. The piece would appeal to that audience in other areas where they consume their news. With coverage in not only national newspapers but also places of entertainment like Comicbook.com and Screen Rant, we’ve still managed to get to them even if the location metric is still something we could improve on.  

In both of these examples, the biggest takeaway was the value of targeting the right locations versus the value of wide appeal. If your message falls upon deaf ears and doesn’t improve visibility and sessions, then you’re obviously missing a trick. 

3. Finding where your audience lives

We’ve mentioned some metrics that you can use to target and identify the audience, but that misses one more element. Where does that audience live? What sort of media do they consume? It’s important to attribute characteristics to the audience you have in mind? 

In building new campaigns, you’re not only thinking about creating something new and newsworthy, but also wondering if it appeals to the customer. Selling software to a CEO or decision-maker of a business is much different from selling software to the average individual looking for something of personal use. Where they consume their news will also differ and you want to make sure that you can reach the right customer, not just any customer.  

So rather than a blanket approach to an outreach where anyone who covers tech is included, fine-tune that media-list. And even before you get to that point, what about the actual crux of the idea? Can you be more light-hearted to appeal to a wide audience? If you’re going after the average Joe to download your app, what are some of his interests that are adjacent to your product but not on the nose? Can you explore other niches and angles within that idea? Are these other niches areas where your customer can still be found? 

Using tools like Facebook Audiences, BuzzSumo, Ahrefs, and Majestic, you can further identify if your niches and target media is valid and even find more targets to add to your list. You can refine the demographics of your audience to make sure they get your message. You can’t attract customers if they don’t see your client, right? Get your client in front of their customers and you’ll see the uplift soon enough.  

What’s next

Once you’ve highlighted the needs of your audience and where you can find them, you’ll be able to develop content marketing strategies that not only appeal to them but that will also deliver the conversions necessary for the business. Most importantly, you will have the data not only back up the strategy, but also a metric to follow moving forward to see the impact of your messaging.  

Natalia Sketchley is an Online PR Campaign Manager at Blueclaw, and is responsible for managing and executing digital PR campaigns for ecommerce, tech, travel, and igaming brands.

How audience insights can improve your campaign’s bottom line




How to win at SEO with FAQ schema markup

30-second summary:

  • According to Neil Patel, less than one percent of businesses take advantage of FAQ schema markups. 
  • There are several benefits schema markups provide to your overall SEO rankings. 
  • Implemented correctly, the FAQ schema markup can get your site into the featured snippets section of Google’s first page. 
  • Google has outlined which pages are eligible and which are prohibited from showing up as featured snippets in Google. 
  • FAQ schema markup added to quality, in-depth content can help to quickly improve your SEO score. 
  • Co-founder of Ally digital media, Abhishek Shah guides you through the process of setting up and implementing the FAQ schema markup to help improve your SEO. 

By implementing schema markup for your FAQ page, you can improve your website’s visibility as well as increase your website’s authority. 

Very few websites seem to be taking advantage of this easy, yet incredibly, effective SEO hack. According to Neil Patel, less than 1% of businesses online seem to be implementing this. So, now’s the time to get on board and ensure the schema markup is set up on your FAQ page. 

But first, let’s look at exactly what it is, and why it will improve your SEO. 

What is FAQ schema markup?

Schema markup is a powerful yet underused piece of code for SEO to help increase your website’s presence in the SERPs. 

This piece of code is placed on your website to help Google, and other search engines, to return better results for consumers. 

Search engines crawl your site, it gets indexed, and then when someone makes a relevant search your content may show up. What schema markup does is provides context to the content.  

Essentially, it removes some of the guessing search engines do when they crawl your site. A markup is able to provide context by telling the search engines what the content means. 

Schema.org explains it this way

“Most webmasters are familiar with HTML tags on their pages. Usually, HTML tags tell the browser how to display the information included in the tag. For example, <h1>Avatar</h1> tells the browser to display the text string “Avatar” in a heading 1 format. However, the HTML tag doesn’t give any information about what that text string means — “Avatar” could refer to the hugely successful 3D movie, or it could refer to a type of profile picture—and this can make it more difficult for search engines to intelligently display relevant content to a user.”

This is why the context provided by adding schema markup to your FAQ page, can help increase your presence in the search results. 

How an FAQ schema markup can help you win at SEO?

Having your FAQs in the featured snippets on Google can generate a huge lift in organic traffic. By adding the schema markup, you improve your chances of this happening. 

An important metric in SEO is CTR (click-through-rate). This is measured by the number of clicks divided by the number of impressions a result gets. For example, if you had 50 clicks and 800 impressions, your CTR would be 6.25%. 

If you can increase your CTR, it shows search engines that the page is relevant for that search term and it can help your website’s overall search ranking. 

Here’s one such example of Nestedbean’s learn page that talks about sleep regression, implementation of FAQ schema helped them in doubling the CTR from 6.5% to 14%. 

Stats showing success of FAQ schema markup implementationSource: Google Search Console

By using an FAQ schema markup, you are increasing your website’s visibility by showing up for a wider variety of keywords. Which means more traffic to be potentially turned into paying customers. 

How to implement FAQ Schema?

The FAQ schema can be implemented in one of two ways: Microdata or JSON-LD. Whichever one you choose we strongly recommend you stick to that one. It’s not a good idea to mix them on a webpage. 

1. Microdata

This is the more complex of the two options. To implement schema markup with Microdata involves coding elements into your website. If you don’t have a web developer in your team this can be a rather tedious and challenging process where the code is added to the body section of your page. 

Here’s a microdata example for the FAQ page schema

<html itemscope itemtype=”https://schema.org/FAQPage”> 

<head> 

<title>Search Engine Marketing Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) – Search Engine Watch</title> 

</head> 

<body> 

<div itemscope itemprop=”mainEntity” itemtype=”https://schema.org/Question”> 

<h3 itemprop=”name”>What is search engine marketing?</h3> 

<div itemscope itemprop=”acceptedAnswer” itemtype=”https://schema.org/Answer”> 

<div itemprop=”text”> 

<p>Search Engine Marketing helps put get your website onto page one of search engines when someone searches for something related to your industry.</p> 

</div> 

</div> 

</div> 

</body> 

</html> 

2. JSON-LD

Google recommends JSON-LD as “Google can read JSON-LD data when it’s dynamically injected into the page’s contents, such as by JavaScript code or embedded widgets in your content management system.” JSON-LD is certainly the easier of the two options, as this code is added to the header section of a page. 

Here’s a JSON-LD example for the FAQ page schema

<html>

<head> 

<title>Search Engine Marketing Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) – Search Engine Watch</title> 

</head> 

<body> 

<script type=”application/ld+json”> 

{ 

“@context”: “https://schema.org”, 

“@type”: “FAQPage”, 

“mainEntity”: [ 

{ 

“@type”: “Question”, 

“name”: “What is Search Engine Marketing”, 

“acceptedAnswer”: { 

“@type”: “Answer”, 

“text”:”Search Engine Marketing helps put get your website onto page one of search engines when someone searches for something related to your industry.”} 

}] 

} 

</script> 

</body> 

</html> 

You can either write the code out from scratch, or you can copy the above code and use it as a template. Just be sure to remember to change out the content for your own. 

The outcome will look like this: 

Snippet example FAQ schema markupSource: Google 

How to validate FAQ schema implementation?

Validating your FAQ schema implementation is a simple three-step process. 

1. Test

To ensure you have implemented the code correctly on your page, you should use Google’s Structured Data Testing Tool. You can add your code snippet here, or the page URL and the testing tool will let you know if you’ve done it correctly or not. There is the added bonus that it will also provide any necessary feedback. 

2. Preview with Google’s Rich Result Tester

This tester will not only let you know if your page is eligible for rich results, but it will also show how the data will look in the SERPs. 

3. Recrawl the page

Once the code is added, and you have run the tests and the page is good to go there is one final step – requesting Google to re-index the page. 

To do this, you will need to log into Google Search Console and enter the modified URL in the top search bar and hit enter. Then you will want to select the option to request indexing. 

In some cases, you can see the effects kick in pretty quickly. Well, pretty quickly for search engines. If you’ve done this for a page that’s already ranking on page one, you should see the results update on the SERPS inside of 20 minutes. 

Which pages can the schema markup be applied to?

When considering adding the FAQ schema markup, it’s important to understand Google’s content guidelines. The first and most obvious guideline is that the page must have a list of questions with their answers attached. 

If your page has questions that users can submit their answers to, you want to use a different type of markup. Instead of using FAQPage, you would want to use QAPage: which is a different type of schema markup. 

Some valid uses of the FAQ schema markup are:

  • A page of FAQs written on the website. These pages have no way for users to submit alternative answers. 
  • Product support pages which list FAQs, that also have no way for users to submit different answers. 

 Some invalid uses of the FAQ schema markup are: 

  • Product support pages where users are able to submit their own answers to questions. 
  • Product pages that allow users to submit many questions and answers on a single page. 
  • Forum pages where users are able to answer questions themselves. 

You want to use the FAQ Schema markup for pages that are not time-sensitive. Also, Google’s guidelines strictly stipulate that you cannot use the FAQPage schema markup for advertising reasons. 

Other times when question and answer content won’t be displayed include if the following types of content are on the page: 

  • Profane 
  • Graphically violent 
  • Obscene 
  • Sexually explicit 
  • Hateful 
  • Illegal activities 

And finally, it is necessary for the FAQ content to be visible to the user on the FAQ page. All this means is you don’t want the content hidden from the user, or for the page to have a brief summary that links off to another page. 

What to include in the FAQ content on your page?

The FAQ schema markup code is quite easy to implement as we’ve shown above. Keep in mind, your FAQ content needs to meet all the usual SEO factors to work in concert with the schema markup. 

This includes aspects such as:

  • How relevant the content is to the topic
  • The page layout
  • How easy it is to read the content 

When you hear the phrase “readability”, it’s referring to a few things. The first is how easy is it to read? That is, are you varying your sentence lengths and using short paragraphs? 

The second is the font choice, as well as its color and size. When it comes to writing for an audience you want an easy font to read that’s a good size and color that doesn’t cause readers to strain their eyes. 

And finally, are you saying something? The best ranking FAQs are the ones that provide in-depth, useful answers. In-depth doesn’t always mean lots of words. If you can successfully (and meaningfully) answer a question in 50 words, that’s fine. 

It’s not about how many words you can write, it’s about how well you can answer a question and provide value.  

The advantage of good SEO-driven content with the right schema markup

By creating informative, well-written content that provides value to your website’s users, and then adding the correct schema markup, you can get yourself on page one of Google. And the more content you get on page one, the more traffic you drive to your site. 

The benefit of more traffic to your site is an increase in sales and subscriptions. 

Win at SEO with FAQ schema

If you want to give your website “the competitive advantage”, all you have to do is follow these simple steps. We recommend starting off with pages that are already ranking well to help get them either onto page one or to increase their real estate on page one. 

Good SEO has a snowball effect. The more content that drives quality traffic to your site, the better your overall SEO score. That is why it’s so important to boost your content efforts with schema markups. 

If you would like to know more about FAQ schema markup, just hit the comment button. 

Abhishek Shah is the co-founder of Ally Digital Media, a leading voice in digital media and marketing. He advocates for evidence-based marketing strategies to fuel the businesses. He can be found on Twitter @abiishek. 

How to win at SEO with FAQ schema markup




The best-kept secret to maintaining and defending the top spot with paid search

30-second summary:

  • Let’s admit it, the line between paid search and organic search is getting blurred.
  • A lot of businesses simply assume that paying more than the competition assures a piece of the most trusted real estate in Google and Bing’s SERPs.
  • While an aggressive paid strategy can certainly get you a piece of it, too often brands overlook the equally important defensive strategy of paid search monitoring.
  • CEO of BrandVerity, Dave Naffziger, helps you learn the essential techniques for maintaining your position one in paid search listings.

What’s the best way to ensure your brand is at the top of the Search Engine Results Page (SERP) for a branded search? For many, the answer seems pretty straightforward — simply pay more than the competition. And while an aggressive paid strategy can certainly get you a piece of the most trusted real estate in search, too often brands overlook the equally important defensive strategy of paid search monitoring.

With brands investing unprecedented amounts into paid search, and the line between organic and paid listings becoming even more blurred, it’s more important than ever for organizations to keep a watchful eye over their campaigns in order to defend them from unscrupulous third parties, infringing ads, poor customer experience and resource drain.

Understanding the basics

On the surface, paid search monitoring is what it sounds like. It involves actively watching to see who is bidding, how often they are advertising, and when infringing ads are identified, removing them by notifying search engines or contacting the party responsible for the ads. 

However, unless you are well-versed in search engine trademark rules, it can be tricky to tell the difference between an infringing and compliant ad. And in many cases, an ad may be allowed by search engines but can run counter to a brand’s partnership and affiliate agreements.

All major search engines allow brand bidding — where a partner or even a competitor bids on your branded terms. The search engines also permit trademark use in paid ads that go to legitimate resellers or informational websites.

The two main rules that limit trademark term use in paid search

1. Trademark terms may not be used in the text or title of an ad

Trademark terms may not be used in the text or title of an ad if the ad takes the user to a site where it is unclear if the advertiser is a reseller or an informational site.

In the example below, the Yahoo search engine is using the VRBO trademark to divert traffic. Someone could easily click on the ad thinking they are going to VRBO. But the ad takes you to a Yahoo search engine results page, with more ads, thus providing a poor user experience for the consumer looking to book through VRBO. 

paid search example VRBO

This is a textbook example of search arbitrage, which happens when an ad primarily leads to additional ads. The arbitrager pockets the difference between what they paid for the traffic and what they get paid for the ad clicks. This type of ad should be submitted to the search engine for a take-down.

2. You can’t use trademark terms in ad texts or titles in a competitive way

In the example below, Joss & Main, a competitor to homeware brand Restoration Hardware, bid on the term “restorationhardware.” Customers looking for Restoration Hardware’s homepage may mistakenly click on the ‘Joss & Main advertisement’ at the top of the SERP and find themselves on a different website than they intended.

paid search example Joss Main

This is the type of competitive use of a trademark that Google and Bing don’t allow, and this ad would also be subject to removal.

Taking steps to protect your position

Once you understand what trademark infringements look like, you need to establish a process to find them. Teams can do this manually by searching a list of priority keywords across several search engines once a week, and then contacting the trademark abusers directly or submitting take-down requests manually to search engines.

While this is certainly a good step to take, since many infringers use evasive techniques like geotargeting (running ads in locations where the advertiser believes the merchant won’t see them) and dayparting (setting ads to run during times of day when they believe the merchant won’t monitor them), manual monitoring can be time-consuming and ineffective. This is where automated solutions can help find and take action on trademark infringements at scale.

Another critical step that can help you defend your numero uno spot

Another critical step that teams can take is establishing and enforcing clear partner and affiliate agreements. Documenting what you will and won’t allow these various parties to do will help you stay consistent in how you handle violations and will reduce trademark infringement and affiliate abuse.

Protecting your investments and relationships

Branded keywords are the most valuable and highest converting search traffic, making them a tempting target for partners, competitors, and third parties to run ads on. However, when they don’t play by the rules bad actors can drive your cost-per-click through the roof and run your clickthrough rate into the ground. Aside from impacting your campaign ROI, these actions also negatively impact your customer experience. 

Search is the front door to your brand online. How customers find you on the SERP impacts the overall customer experience, and ultimately, your bottom line. It’s simple. Customers who can easily find your brand after a branded keyword search are more likely to buy your products and services, while those that unwittingly click on a competitor or partner’s website at the top of the page are less likely to buy directly from you.

By taking the appropriate measures to defend their SERP position, brands can optimize online investments, strengthen relationships with good partners and safeguard their customers’ online experiences.

Dave Naffziger is the CEO of leading online brand protection company BrandVerity.

The best-kept secret to maintaining and defending the top spot with paid search




Nine Google Ads hacks to improve your CTR and conversion rate

Advertising is the big gun of paid efforts brands put in to increase awareness and revenue. Be it small businesses or large enterprises, everyone has a shot at advertising.  

With global ad spend reaching an estimated $579 billion at the end of 2018 and online advertising leading the charts, we need to pay attention to advertising.

Graph on global spends on paid ads medium-wise

Source: Vox

Leading social media networks like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Quora. all are open to advertising on. While social media advertising has its own impact, there is no denying the fact that search engine ads are efficient too.

Google Ads and Bing Ads lead the charge in search engine advertising. There are a lot of reasons why advertisers prefer Google Ads to any other form of online advertising:

  • A person who is actively searching for products on Google is more inclined to buy than one who is scrolling social media
  • With the lion’s share in the global search market, Google is undoubtedly the leading and most used search engine in the world
  • The scalability and flexibility of Google Ads
  • Regular updates, tons of features, and great support

The benefits of using Google Ads are many

But the point I want to stress is – Are we using it to its full potential? Are we optimizing our Google Ads? Are they driving in conversions or results?

If you thought twice before answering the above questions, you are probably in the right place. Flushing money into advertising without understanding its workflow is not cool.

Throughout this article, we will discuss the top hacks which every advertiser should use to improve their Google Ads performance. Irrespective of your business niche, you will gain great insights and probably become better at Google advertising in 2019.

Nine Google Ads hacks that will make your paid advertising efforts worth it

1. Pay attention to mobile

From 6.1% in 2011 to 52.2% in 2018, the percentage of mobile phone traffic is growing exponentially.

You can note how the percentage of all global web pages served to mobile phones from 2009 to 2018 in the graph given below.

percentage of all global web pages served to mobile phones from 2009 to 2018

Source: Statista

This number is definitely gonna increase. With so many people using their phones to access the web, advertisers need to stay one step ahead.

Be it any type of ad, Google is intelligent enough to format your ads for mobile, meaning they will automatically show up on mobile devices when someone searches for related keywords.

But there are some ads such as “Call-only” ads and “App Promotion” ads” which are specifically designed for mobile.

Call-only ads are different from call extensions. These ads allow people to call your business directly and help in engagement.

App promotion ads focus on getting more app installs, more in-app actions and in-app action value. These are shown across the Google network to help you promote your application.

Some tips for optimizing your ads for mobile

  1. Your ad’s landing page must be mobile-friendly allowing users to easily access the webpage on their mobile devices
  2. As you have less space to display ads on mobile, make sure you have the most important information in the first line
  3. Use call bid adjustments to drive more calls to your business
  4. Keep track of both online and offline mobile conversions because mobile engagement results in offline actions. Using lead ads and call-only ads to gather customer data and importing this data into your offline database allows better conversion tracking.

With more and more mobile shoppers, it is important for advertisers to leverage Google Ads Mobile.

2. Write compelling ad copy

This may be the most fundamental advertising learning but people still are not good at it. I want to stress the fact that your ads must be appealing.

The majority of Google Ads are just posted for the sake of advertising. We need to understand our customers’ emotions and step in their shoes. Most of the time, we come across such boring ads that we may want to report them for lack of luster.

To stand out from your competition, you need to excel at creating special ads. This can be achieved through:

Emotional touch: This might be your best shot at engaging your audience. Everyone is affected by emotions. When we add emotions to our advertisements, it forces people to notice and connect.

Show statistics: Including number and stats in your headlines and copy is highly recommended. This builds trust and makes your ads more appealing to the searchers.

Example of using statistics to create appealing ad copy

Use Display URLs to good effect: I hope every one of us is aware that our landing page URL and display URL need not be the same and can be different. This may seem to have a trivial impact but that isn’t the case.

Using keywords in your display URL ensures the searchers that they will be taken to a relevant landing page.

Example of using a good display URL in ads

Ad extensions and reviews: The more detailed your ad, the more chances of it being clicked. Ad extensions serve a great purpose by listing all the details about a business. When people compare any two ads, they definitely click the one with more extensions.

Reviews about businesses build trust and people can clearly see what others have to say about your work.

Example of using reviews to improve ad CTRs

Offer a Solution- People click on ads when they see a solution to their problems. You need to step into your customer’s shoes and ponder while writing your ad copy:

  • What keywords are being searched by my target audience?
  • What information do I expect to see if I am searching for something?
  • Does my product solve the customer’s problem?

After assessing the answers to the above questions, you will surely write better ad copy which will engage your audience.

3. Competitor analysis

This is one of my favorite hacks that advertisers can use on Google Ads. Bidding on competitor keywords cuts down your research work and is highly efficient. Having a look at how others are running ads on the same products simplifies things a lot.

Consider this example

You have an online clothing store with a large inventory. You are about to enter the world of online advertising for your store. But then, you decide to have a look at how others are performing.

This helps you to start afresh and now you already have a strategic blueprint in your mind. This allows you to perform better as you already have access to your competitor’s hard work and research. You can simply use their tactics or add something extra from your side.

The best thing of them all: Google allows us to bid on competitor’s keywords but limits the use of trademarks. 

We have a lot of tools for competitor analysis but I recommend SemRush. It’s easy to use and I have been using it for some time now.

1. There is a separate tab for “Advertising Research” under Domain Analytics in the tool. You need to enter the website URL of your competitor here.

screenshot of SEMrush tool for competitor research

2.  After you feed in the URL, you will see an overview of all the ads being run by your competitor with important metrics to check.

screenshot of metrics seen in SEMrush's tool for competitor analysis

3.  You are even able to see the exact ad copies of your competitor, keywords being bid on, the CPC map, and other such valuable details.

screenshot of competitor ad copies seen in the SEMrush tool

Now, you will have a complete idea of what keywords are performing best for your competitor. You can also check the exact ad copy they are using.

For display ads, I will recommend Moat. It is a digital marketing intelligence tool which allows you to have a look at several display creatives from different brands.

screenshot example of how Moat shows you competitors' ad displays in various countries

One more thing that can be implied is the use of VPNs (Virtual Private Networks). If you want to check your competitor’s ads in some other countries, then you can simply use a VPN and perform a Google search with related keywords.

4. Use exclusions and negative keywords

This is a pro tip and must surely be executed. During my time of advertising on Google, I noticed a very odd trend and functionality of the Google Ads platform.

When we talk about ad optimization, Google gives you full freedom and features to run your ads as you wish.

For display ads, whenever you click on an ad campaign, you have the“Placements” tab in the left-hand sidebar. This tab shows three options:

Placements: Here, you may enter multiple website URLs on which you want your display ad to appear.

Where Ads Showed: This is a list of the web pages and mobile applications where your display ad was shown.

Exclusions: Exclusions include all those websites and mobile apps where you do not want your ad to appear. This generally includes all business niches which are irrelevant to your business.

Most advertisers run their ad campaigns for a while. Then, they check where their ads were shown and further, they optimize their ads to exclude some websites and apps.

My point is we should exclude business categories(especially mobile apps) as soon as our ad is live.

Why?

Because, from personal experience, when you haven’t given Google any information about where to run your ads and where not, it will show your ads amongst all the categories irrespective of your business niche and you will lose money.

It doesn’t make any sense when we wait for the calamity to occur and then take preventive measures. We should simply be cautious from the beginning.

You could either exclude placements manually or use a placement exclusion list.

exa,mple of excluding placements for Google Ads

What happened with me was that my ad campaigns got a lot of irrelevant clicks majorly because my ad was shown on a lot of mobile applications. I started excluding the whole app categories which saved me money and improved my ads.

I would advise fellow advertisers to use placements and exclusions wisely to see your ad performance grow.

The same applies for using negative keywords.

We all are aware of the importance of negative keywords for search campaigns. Just like keywords which we decide for our ads to appear on, there are certain keywords which we do not want our ads to appear on. These are called negative keywords.

Search terms are keywords or phrases which someone searched for and then clicked your ad. We need to include unrelated search terms as negative keywords so that our ad does not show up for those phrases.

Tip: Whenever you create a search campaign, add some general negative keywords wherever applicable.

screenshot of negative phrase match keywordsexample of broad match keywords

Source

If you sell women’s handbags and purses online, keywords like men’s purses, wallets, etc. must be included as negative keywords in your ad campaign beforehand.

5. Smart remarketing

The reason I am writing this under “smart remarketing” is that we as advertisers are not using the powerful weapon of remarketing to its full potential. Here, I will share the pro tips of remarketing which I’ve learned over the years.

We all understand that to remarket is to re-engage users who once visited your website but didn’t complete some action which you consider a conversion. It can be a product purchase, ebook download, and lead sign-up.

Remarketing allows you to retarget customers who have already shown interest in your business and hence it gives huge returns and conversions.

Some points of interest

1. Membership duration

This is an arguable one but the appropriate membership duration for your remarketing audience should be 60 days.

example of remarketing

The maximum limit is 540 days and most advertisers choose this. My point of view is that allowing people to stay in your remarketing audiences for more than 60 days doesn’t make sense.

The reason being people complete any desired action/purchase within 60 days on an average and allowing 540 days renders the remarketing audience ineffective.

Just so you know, this is no hard and fast rule. You may well keep the limit to 540 days or any time duration. Just consider your campaign objectives and previous conversion data before deciding.

2. Targeting abandoned carts

Abandoned shopping carts are a big pain point for online sellers and the issue is they are inevitable. With remarketing though, you can target abandoned carts easily.

While creating your remarketing audience, you have the option of panning out rules. The rules can contain, “start with”, “end with” some particular URL that you feed into the system.

To target users who abandoned your shopping cart, you should feed the “add to cart” URL in the contain part and input the “order received” URL in the does not contain part.

example of re-targeting abandoned carts

Using the above tip, you can target people who have abandoned the shopping cart for any particular product.

3. Complimentary items

Every business has products which they want to cross-sell. This means there are always some items which are related to each other and go in hand in hand. Businesses love to target customers who have purchased either of the items so that they can show ads of the other item to the concerned audience.

Remarketing allows us to do this efficiently. We need to create a rule which contains the “order received” URL for a particular product. It means that our ad will only be shown to people who have purchased some specific item.

example of re-targeting with complimentary items

We just need to create an ad for the complimentary item and show it to the buyers of the original item.

This is a great cross-selling strategy which helps our ads to be shown to the right audience improving the performance and conversions of our ads.

Advertisers need to remarket effectively. Best practices like dynamic remarketing have a lot of potentials and can be the game changer for your paid advertising efforts.

6. Make the best use of In-Market Audiences

In-Market Audiences are a boon to small businesses advertising online. They can be defined as groups or segments of shoppers for different categories who are actively searching for some product “in the market”.

We all know remarketing can work wonders for us but the only prerequisite is audience size.

This is where in-market segments step in. An in-market audience is a readymade consumer data list which gives us an idea of what people are actively searching or looking for online.

This data is gold for advertisers given that we already know which consumers are interested in which type of products.

I used both Google Analytics and Google Ads to take full advantage of in-market segments.

Step one

Go to Google Analytics (hope you have set it up for your business) and check the “Product Performance” tab under “Ecommerce”.

Example of Google Analytics

Step two

Here, you will see all your product purchases. You need to select “In-Market Segment” as the secondary dimension.

reviewing product purchases in "In-market segments"

Step three

Note down all in-market segments for your top selling products.

Step four

While creating the audience for your Google Ads campaign, be sure to include the same segments to show your ad to the desired audience.

screenshot of including same segments in Google Ads

This will ensure your ad (for a specific product) to be presented to the same category of people who purchased same or related products (same in-market segment) from you previously.

Sounds good, right? Then it is time to implement the same.

7. Optimize your “Quality Score”

According to Google, “Quality Score” is an estimate of the quality of your ads, keywords, and landing pages. Higher quality ads can lead to lower prices and better ad positions.

This is not just a hack but the most important metric relative to Google Ads.

Understanding and improving your site’s quality score can take you places. It is a rating between one to ten which depicts how well are your ads fairing in the online market. It has three components which are expected clickthrough rate, ad relevance, and landing page experience.

All of these components point towards one direction

  • Are your ads fit for the audience you have targeted?
  • How well is your audience engaging with your ad?
  • Do your ads achieve campaign objectives like conversions, traffic, sales, etc?

A good quality score helps your ads to rank well. How?

Ad Rank is an estimate which determines the position of your ad in Google SERPs. The Quality Score of your keywords multiplied by the bid on your keywords determine your Ad Rank.

 

formula for improving your website's "Quality Score"

Source: Wordstream

As depicted above, a high “Quality Score” improves your Ad Rank and lowers your CPC, which means even if you are bidding less than your competitors for the same keywords, your ad will rank higher than the rest because your Quality Score is better.

In the new Google Ads interface, you need to navigate to the “Keyword” level and then check the Quality Score column for respective keywords.

listing of quality score in Google Ads

After analyzing your “Quality Score”, you need to improve it.

Check out these tips

  • Use multiple ad groups with specific targeted keywords. Don’t add irrelevant keywords just for the sake of using.
  • Improve your landing page experience. Clear, correct, and related data will compel your customers to stay on your webpage and engage.
  • Improve your ad copy. Good, catchy headlines with to the point descriptions always make a good ad. Emphasize on features which you are providing exclusively. Sales and discounts must be highlighted.
  • Use smaller ad groups with less number of keywords. Using 15-20 keywords in a single ad group will complicate things a lot and hence it is not recommended. Use around nine to ten keywords per ad group.

With time, advertisers realize the importance of the “Quality Score” and start optimizing it. I would advise to aim for a healthy Quality Score from the start and see how it impacts your overall ads performance.

8. Google Ads scripts

Using Google Ads scripts will save you a lot of effort and time. Some consider this best fit for advanced advertisers but I have a different point of view.

What is a Google Ads Script?

A script is a pre-defined JavaScipt code which allows you to modify your ad campaigns and automate advertising tasks.

Scripts can be used to automate repetitive tasks and control your Google Ads campaigns with the help of JavaScript. Though scripts are most appropriate where you have to manage multiple Google Ads accounts, they can also ease out daily manual work.

How to use Google Ads Scripts

To use scripts, click on “Tools & Settings”. Then click “Scripts” under Bulk Actions.

Example screenshot of Google Ads Scripts

Here, you can simply add a pre-written script or write your own. Writing your own script is not as hard as it seems because it is based on JavaScipt. You don’t need to be a champion coder and a basic understanding of JavaScript is sufficient to write your own script.

Some helpful information about writing a custom Google Ads Script can be found here.

Your script will perform some specific task for you in your ad campaigns.

You need to preview your script before running it to avoid mistakes.

Some of the common repetitive tasks which you can automate using scripts

  • Using bid modifiers and adjusting your advertisement bids according to your needs
  • Pausing and deleting ads with low performance(pause some ads with low “Quality Score”, CTR, and conversions
  • Ad performance and reporting

There is a lot of work which you can automate using Google Ads Scripts. You just need to check the resources to filter out which one works best for you.

Here is an example of Google Ads Script to automatically pause ads with low CTR

Example of Google Ads Script to automatically pause ads with low CTR

Source: Wordstream

Scripts are there to lessen the advertising workload and believe me, it works. We just need to explore it a bit more.

9. Effective use of bidding strategies

With Google introducing three new bidding strategies for Google Ads advertisers recently, we all know that leveraging Google Ads bidding strategies is the way forward.

What is a bidding strategy?

In simple terms, a bidding strategy is a way you would want Google to exhaust your budget on course to accomplish your campaign objectives or goals. You have different options you would like to choose to bid for your ads.

Currently, we have these bidding strategies available to us in Google Ads:

Target CPA (Cost Per Acquisition): If driving conversions is your main objective, then this is the strategy for you. CPA is the maximum amount which you are willing to pay for one conversion. You feed your target CPA and Google will optimize your campaign to get the maximum conversions within your budget.

Target ROAS (Return On Ad Spend): Return on Ad Spend is the number of product sales divided by your ad spend. You set a specific target ROAS and Google will set your bids to maximize conversions according to your ROAS.

Maximize Conversions: This is pretty much straightforward. You assign a daily budget amount and Google will try to get you the maximum conversions within that amount.

Enhanced Cost Per Click (ECPC): This is where Google predicts the likelihood of a conversion and adjusts your bids accordingly. If the likelihood is high, your bids will be increased and vice-versa. Note: All the above strategies fall underSmart Bidding which is a subset of automated bidding strategies

Maximize Clicks: As the name suggests, Google will try to get as many clicks as possible within your daily budget.

Manual CPC Bidding: Here, you will have to adjust your bids manually for all your ad groups and placements. Though you have much more control, this strategy requires proper monitoring of your ads which takes some time.

Target Search Page Location: This is when you ask Google to adjust your bids so that your ad always appears on the first page results of Google (or at the top of the results 1-4). No guaranteed placements because your quality score will always be taken into account.

Target Outranking Share: This is the best strategy for you when you want your ads to appear above your competitor’s ads. When both your and your competitor’s ad are shown, Google will automatically adjust to place your ads above your competitor’s.

CPM Bidding (Cost Per Thousand Impressions): This will optimize your bids according to the impressions of your ads and is only available for Display and YouTube campaigns.

vCPM Bidding (Cost Per Viewable Thousand Impressions): According to Google, an ad is viewable when at least 50% of its area is visible for 1 second for Display Network ads or two seconds for video ads.

This bidding strategy adjusts your bids according to the viewable impressions your ad gets. Only for Display and YouTube campaigns.

CPV Bidding (Cost Per View): CPV bidding is for video ad campaigns, and here you bid for a maximum number of views for your video.

Target Impression Share Bidding: Focused on brand awareness, this bidding strategy helps you to dominate ad impressions for specific keywords. You decide an impression share (like 50, 80%) for a specific keyword and your ad will be according to your desired impression share.

Google is planning to take down some of these existing bidding strategies in the near future but we need to wait and see.

Newly added bidding strategies

Campaign-level conversion setting: Earlier, all conversion goals were set at the account level leaving all campaigns under that account bound to follow the same goals. Now, different campaigns can have different conversion goals.

Seasonality adjustments: This has been specifically added keeping promotions, holidays in mind where advertisers are sure that their conversions will increase over those periods. Your bids will be adjusted accordingly.

Maximize Conversion Value: This is quite similar to the Maximize Conversions bidding strategy but here we consider conversion value as the building block.

We decide a particular conversion value and Google will try to get the maximum conversion value from your daily budget.

Value Rules: All conversions do not have the same value and keeping this in mind, Google will be introducing Value Rules which will help advertisers differentiate conversion values.

Woof, that was some list! Hope it helped you understand the basics right.

The point is with so many bidding strategies to choose from, businesses surely have one which is the best fit for them. Dive into the details, do your research and understand the logic.

A bidding strategy is Google’s effort to make things easy and automated for you. Choose your pick and start testing.

Key takeaways

Yes, you can master Google advertising by implementing the above hacks. The key is constant testing and gathering new insights. The more you test and learn, the better you become at advertising. One best practice is not repeating or making rookie mistakes which can affect your advertising strategy adversely.

  • Please don’t spend too much on ad testing. Try to control your budget while you implement new strategies and ideas.
  • Providing a great landing page experience must be your priority because your ads are of no use without an optimized landing page.
  • Do a lot of research. Dig in for keywords, study your competitors, learn the market trends and then move forward. Jumping straight into the mainstream without any homework can be wasteful.

Moreover, adapting to new changes and updates can be beneficial. Google recently introduced three new ad types and advertisers need to pay heed. Online advertising is experiencing a significant shift and advertisers should be up for it.

Which of the above hacks do you find most useful for your business? How do you plan to implement it? Are there any other hacks that should be on the list?

Share your thoughts in the comments.

Himanshu Rauthan is an entrepreneur, Co-Founder at MakeWebBetter, BotMyWork, and the Director of CEDCOSS Technologies. He can be found on Twitter .

Nine Google Ads hacks to improve your CTR and conversion rate