“By 2020, brick and mortar retail spaces will be little more than showrooms.” – Eddie Machaalani and Mitchell Harper, Co-Founders of BigCommerce 

This is the new commerce reality: Physical retail shops are dying out as the transition to digital speeds up and intensifies. 

Over the course of 2017, more than 8,000 shops across the U.S. closed their doors forever; an all-time record for store closures. 2018 is facing record-breaking numbers as predictions cite the number of store closures at around 9,000.

The alternative that every retailer is turning to lives in the online world. Ecommerce provides merchants with a low-overhead, high-yield opportunity that is becoming increasingly popular with consumers.

Last year, ecommerce sales accounted for more than 13% of all retail sales. By 2022, experts surmise that digital retail stores will account for 17% of all sales in the U.S.

It’s for these reasons that a sizable number of ecommerce platforms have emerged in the online ecosystem, providing owners the digital storefront they need to thrive.

With so many options to choose from, veterans and newbies alike can have a hard time deciphering the pros and cons of each service.

We’re going to help make sure that you understand who leads the pack so that you can build the most prosperous e-business possible.

Below is a comparison of the top three names in the ecommerce world: BigCommerce, WooCommerce, and Shopify.

BigCommerce

BigCommerce makes the bold claim of being the number one ecommerce platform. But it’s not hard to understand the company’s chutzpah when the brand’s website touts that its, “. . . merchants grow 28% year over year, nearly 2x the industry average.”

BigCommerce sites are highly customizable and easily scalable. Its cloud-based software is leveraged by nearly 100,000 stores across 150 countries and has helped merchants generate more than $8 billion in sales.

Outside of the platform’s stunning templates, intuitive interface, and high-quality customer support, BigCommerce offers a slew of features.

BigCommerce also enables customers to create custom domain names and features various SEO-focused tools like sitemaps, custom URLs, meta descriptions, a myriad of tags, and more.

While other platforms are either made to host your store or to work with your own hosting, BigCommerce is platform agnostic; this makes it a powerful option for retailers that seek expedient growth. Brands can begin using the platform’s SaaS solution, transition to their own BigCommerce-integrated WordPress site, and eventually utilize BigCommerce’s API with whatever custom infrastructure is most beneficial.

Additionally, this service provides a robust analytics system, customer segmentation lists, and built-in blogging features; a nice touch considering the power of content marketing.

When it comes to storefronts, BigCommerce provides tons of value through its products reviews, zoomable images, recently viewed products section, assorted search filters, wish lists, and social sharing components.

BigCommerce’s checkout elements are what really make the platform shine, however, as users can gain access to an abandoned cart saver (which BigCommerce claims can recover an average of 15% of lost sales), accounts or guest checkout options, single-page checkout processes for reduced friction, or other components designed to drive more conversions.

Moreover, BigCommerce offers native integrations with eBay and Amazon, can be leveraged as a Facebook shop, and accommodates multiple currencies and multilingual support.

Because BigCommerce is a beast, some features take months or even years to roll out, so change isn’t also created at high speed. And like any tool, BigCommerce has its technical challenges, and is reported by some to be a tough platform to master out of the gate. Offering such a robust suite of features means that the learning curve can be significant. But if you want to play with the big dogs, you need a tool that can support your efforts. 

WooCommerce

Much like BigCommerce, WooCommerce  makes the fearless assertion of being, “. . . the most popular eCommerce platform on the web.” Once again, however, the company backs up its gusto with over 33 million downloads, powering more than 28% of all online stores. Woo is a powerhouse. 

Unlike BigCommerce, however, WooCommerce is a free, open source shopping cart plugin for WordPress, effectively turning anyone’s site into an online store.

While the WooCommerce plugin is free, users will find themselves running into quite a few web hosting fees and add-on extension purchases needed for more advanced features;. But it is nice to get started without any out of pocket expenses. 

WooCommerce has built a prolific name due to its affordable nature, easy integration with WordPress, and feature-rich offerings. 

Here’s what comes free with a WooCommerce download: Users can expect access to an all-around mobile-friendly design that looks great on all devices, one-page checkouts, the ability to sell physical and digital products, and geo-location elements that simplify calculating a customer’s shipping and sales tax.

WooCommerce’s product organization categories and inventory management system make both the customer and admin experience easy to navigate.

Much like its competitors, this platform also features account or guest checkout options, product reviews, and informative analytics features that help to increase sales. 

Since WooCommerce integrates with WordPress, users benefit from the platform’s SEO-friendly nature so that ranking in the SERPs is not only possible, but a core practice.

Like any tool, WooCommerce has its challenges. The platform has a very steep learning curve and is not recommended for novice merchants. Moreover, users will likely find themselves spending quite a bit of cash on one-time purchase and subscription-based extensions to bolster their user experience and sales abilities. Also, if you need to put in a support ticket, don’t expect a speedy response; customer support is reportedly often slow.

Despite these downsides, however, WooCommerce is a powerful system for those that are familiar with WordPress and have some experience in the ecommerce world.

Shopify

It’s hard to discuss ecommerce without pulling Shopify into the picture.

Shopify is a fully hosted ecommerce platform that places its focus on ease of use. The company has been quite successful in this regard, as it hosts over 400,000 stores and has helped generate over $34 billion in sales.

Shopify is likely to be the most affordable solution on the list and comes with a fair number of features; however, considering the company’s focus, it often lacks the advanced capabilities that many online merchants are after.

Shopify features account and guest checkout options, consumer segmentation elements, and the ability to leverage Amazon FBA or integrate with several different drop-shipping apps.

On the product management front, this service does feature a robust inventory management system and product organization aspects, and the ability to sell physical and digital products. 

Additionally, Shopify provides its users with abandoned cart recovery emails, geo-location tax calculators, email marketing integration with platforms like MailChimp, various social integrations including Facebook sales pages, product reviews, detailed analytics, SEO features, the ability to display your storefront in more than 50 different languages, and the Shopify app for managing your online store on the go.

Since Shopify is focused on simplicity, however, users can often find themselves disappointed with the limits on product variations, a complete absence of wholesale features, and the multi-page checkout process. Much of this can be resolved through various addons, but those will quickly add up to a hefty price tag. 

Shopify also sends those who are ready to checkout to a Shopify purchase page. This may not be a big deal for some, but many brands like to maintain a professional and self-sufficient appearance. If that’s a priority for you, Shopify is likely not your ideal platform.

Ecommerce is a dynamic, highly competitive space, but given its power and growth, it’s well worth diving in. If your business is ready to take to leap into online sales, one of the platforms above will likely be a perfect match. 

Have you used any of these platforms before? If so, please feel free to share your experience below.

The post What is the Best Ecommerce Platform for SMBs? appeared first on SiteProNews.

“Each day, Google usually releases one or more changes designed to improve our results. Some are focused around specific improvements. Some are broad changes. Last week, we released a broad core algorithm update. We do these routinely several times per year….” – Tweet sent out by Google SearchLiaison account via Danny Sullivan 

In early March, rumors swirled about a possible Google algorithm update.

On March 12^th, Google confirmed that a core algorithm update did indeed occur, however, the alteration is not what most people suspected it to be.

When Google confirmed the update, it noted that it was an amendment to its core algorithm; something that occurs several times throughout the year. 

Core algorithm changes can result in one or more changes to the SERPs, but Google did not divulge exactly what changes were made, resulting in much speculation as to what exactly the search giant was targeting.

Google’s Search Liaison, Danny Sullivan, took to Twitter to try and quell concerns by stating that Google was not after low-quality sites. Doing so, Sullivan made it unequivocally clear that sites who lost rankings should not be searching for a “fix,” as there isn’t one:

“There’s no ‘fix’ for pages that may perform less well other than to remain focused on building great content. . .”

So, if Google is not after demoting low-quality content, what might the update be about?

The Broad Core Algorithm Update

It is rather uncommon for Google to address updates to its core algorithm, as this process happens on a near daily basis. This update, however, is not one of these typical updates; it is of the variety that occurs a few times per year. 

While Google’s intentions are still unknown, we do have some information to help point SEOs and site owners in the right direction:

• The alteration was implemented with the aim of providing improved search results.
• There is no “fix” for sites that dropped in position.
• The update is focused on content, but it is not focused on quality.

A possible reason as to why Google did addresses this update is that SEOs continually assume that such alterations target quality. This paradigm, however, does not take into consideration that Google might just be attempting to create a better experience for search users, without going on a “seek and destroy” type mission. This notion has been posited time and again over the last several years, but Google has made continual efforts to dispel such claims.

Several years back, Google released information to the public about its algorithm. This data pointed to the fact that the company implemented at least two changes to its algorithm daily:

“…Our most experienced search engineers carefully review the data from all the different experiments and decide if the change is approved to launch. It sounds like a lot, but the process is well refined, so an engineer can go from idea to live on Google for a percentage of users in 24 hours. Based on all of this experimentation, evaluation and analysis, we launched 665 improvements to search in 2012.”

This illustrates why Google typically doesn’t address such matters. Despite this information being out in the wild, the same situation arose in late 2017 over the Maccabees “update.” Here’s what Danny Sullivan tweeted in response:

“Reports calling this a single ‘update’ or calling it ‘Fred’ don’t reflect what we actually said: there were several minor changes that happened as they routinely do in any particular week.”

So, if the update is not targeting quality, how is Google altering the SERPs and what actions should small business owners be taking to help minimize damage or capitalize on the situation?

What Google’s Likely Doing

When examining Google’s research papers, none of the 22 areas of focus is fixated on low quality content or webpages. The areas that do relate to search engine optimization are “understanding user intent” and “understanding content.”

Both elements are likely to be a part of Google Broad Core algorithm update. Given that it has been made explicitly clear that there is nothing wrong with sites that dropped in rankings and that there is nothing to fix, it is likely that the update merely enhanced Google’s understanding of content and how that applies to given search queries.

What You Should Be Doing

In the series of tweets sent out by Sullivan, the Google Liaison recommended waiting for content to, “…rise relative to other pages.” This is not the most proactive advice as this assumes that the people he is speaking to are publishing exceptional content; content that is more useful than that of their competition. 

That said, the thing that small business owners should be focused on is creating outstanding content. Since that is such a subjective term, however, it needs a bit of defining. 

Firstly, while keywords do matter, they should not be the zenith of your efforts. The core focus of your content should be to solve problems that people are having in your industry. 

Google’s main purpose is to solve questions presented by users. Therefore, the engine is most likely to promote content that revolves around the same goal. When we talk about crafting outstanding content, this means to get to the absolute bottom of a user’s issue and address it comprehensively.

You will know if you are accomplishing this based on the response your content receives. You can help improve the value and usefulness of your content by making answers easy to find, creating a user-friendly layout, and delving deep into the topic at hand.

Google algorithm updates are nothing out of the norm. Neither is the core message of how to thrive amidst such changes: Create epic content.

This concept is not hard to grasp or implement. Spend the time necessary to craft preeminent materials for your audience, and Google will reward your efforts.

What are your thoughts on Google’s Broad Core algorithm change? Has it impacted your site, and if so, how?

The post Changes to Google’s Core Algorithm: How This Affects You appeared first on SiteProNews.

“The beauty of SEO is that, instead of pushing a marketing message onto folks who don’t want to hear what you have to say, you can reverse-engineer the process to discover exactly what people are looking for, create the right content for it, and appear before them at exactly the moment they are looking for it. It’s pull vs. push.” – Cyrus Shepard, Founder of Fazillion 

The digital world is increasingly cluttered and cacophonous with every passing hour. Each day, a myriad of new sites, services, and competitors come into existence. Because of the exponentially competitive nature of virtual business, standing apart from the expanding crowd can feel like a herculean feat.

What many don’t understand, however, is that creating carbon copies of what your rivals offer won’t get you anywhere; and complete originality will likely have a similar effect. In reality, it requires a blend of both. As Isaac Newton once said, “If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants.”

When it comes to search engine optimization in 2018, one of the best methods to climbing the SERPs is to reverse engineer your strategy by investigating and analyzing what your top competitors are doing so that you can weave similar strategies into your own blueprint. 

If you’re tired of having the competition stand on your brand’s shoulders in the SERPs, then check out this 4-step guide to reverse engineering your SEO efforts.

1. Establish Your Rivals

Identifying your main competition might seem like a bit of a no-brainer, but when most brands conduct this research, they end up leaving all sorts of information uncovered. 

While you probably have a good idea of who your direct opposition is (as they probably offer near identical products/services), you are likely less versed in who your indirect and perceived competition is. In fact, you might not even know what these phrases mean.

Indirect competition are the brands who offer comparable products/services and vie for the same customers as you; but, these folks also offer goods that fall outside of your niche. 

For instance, shoe stores would identify other shoe retailers as competitors. But, they might fail to list superstores such as Wal-Mart, who also sell footwear. 

To uncover your indirect competitors, begin conducting keyword research to uncover which businesses are contending for space on Google. Since your target audience is typing various keywords into search engines to find offerings like that of your brand’s, this is a good place to start. Additionally, you can use tools like Conductor Searchlight to establish which websites are ranking for a keyword important to your business.

Your perceived competition, on the other hand, is a bit harder to establish. These organizations might not sell similar goods as your company, but they compete for your audience’s time and energy just the same. As a small example, companies like Kodak now must compete with every smartphone company on Earth, despite occupying a wholly different industry. The best way to sniff these brands out is with social listening services like Mention or Keyhole.

Once you have established your top direct, indirect, and perceived competition, it’s time to conduct your analysis.

2. Assess On-Site Content

Content is the most influential driver of traffic today. Because of that, you should go through your competitor’s sites to identify their most shared pieces. You can use a tool like BuzzSumo to assist with the task.

By establishing what content performed best for your competition, you can get a read on which topics and types of content will resonate with your audience.

Be sure that you analyze the content itself, too. You need to identify areas where you can do better, go deeper, and be clearer. The content you create based on this research needs to top what you already found, not copy it.

3. Study Technical SEO Components

Combing through your competition’s technical SEO elements can help you easily identify overlooked aspects of your own site. Start with scrutinizing some of the most basic elements. See if they are tagging titles appropriately, using keywords in a fruitful manner, optimizing visible meta data, maintaining site speeds with pages featuring multimedia content, etc.

After assessing the surface information, dive a bit deeper. Are they leveraging Accelerated Mobile Pages? Have they implemented HTTPS?

It is important to figure these things out because if your site is using less advanced code, it can be challenging to play catch up. It is vital to become familiarized with how to implement advanced SEO techniques if you aren’t already versed on the subject. If you don’t have the bandwidth for this, consider employing a technical SEO professional to help bolster your efforts.

4. Audit Backlinks

Backlinks are still an influential aspect to climbing the SERPs, so it is necessary to study who is linking to your competitors. 

There are a variety of ways that you can obtain information on your rival’s link building tactics. One of the most critically-acclaimed tools for such a job is Ahrefs. Through this platform, you can uncover all links pointing to a given site and even pinpoint sudden spikes in the number of inbound links; this allows you to determine if the fluctuation is the result of a recently launched campaign. 

This is important information as it’s a definitive indicator that they are producing something that is proving popular with consumers. Find out what that thing is so that you can create something similarly appealing.

Additionally, take note of who is pointing at your competitor’s site, as well as their industry, and any other idiosyncratic information. Use this to your advantage by reaching out to them with your own valuable content offerings to see if they would be interested in linking to your site as well. 

But remember, your content needs to be better than what your competition is producing; this is the key to toppling them in the SERPs. 

Reverse engineering your SEO strategy by breaking open your competition’s is an incredibly valuable strategy to creating a more sufficient blueprint for your brand. 

Start by identifying the key players in your niche and around it; then dig in and see what they are doing right. If you utilize this methodology appropriately, you’re likely to see a meaningful rise in your site rankings.

Do you think reverse engineering is an ethical strategy? What other tools are great for competitive analysis?

The post How to Reverse Engineer Your SEO Strategy appeared first on SiteProNews.

Crafting compelling metadata is a powerful skill; and one that takes practice, careful thought, and consideration. Unfortunately, because most metadata is never seen by site visitors, this vital SEO element often gets neglected by site owners. It’s important to remember that search engines do see this information; this is how they learn what content is featured on a page. And that’s why it should never be ignored.

Metadata is comprised of three key elements: Title, keywords, and description. Each component plays an important role and supplies different information to search bots and Google users alike. Meta descriptions let bots and users know what the page is about and what information can be found there. This has a profound impact on click-through rates; and a site’s CTR certainly has an effect on SERP rankings.

If your metadata is structured and written correctly, it will entice users to visit your site. If it is improperly handled, however, Google will replace the description with its own version; and that might not communicate the message you are looking to relay.

Here we will explore metadata’s 3 components and how you can optimize this information for the biggest SEO boost.

Metadata Titles

As title information appears in the SERPs, it is one of the most important metadata elements to consider. While title tags can be of nearly any length, if they go over 70 characters, Google will cut them off. For this reason, it’s wise to keep titles as succinct as possible, while still maintaining accuracy. 

If you aren’t sure if your title makes the cut, try using this snippet organizer as it shows how titles will appear on Google and other search engines.

It is also helpful to place the main keyword(s) in the beginning of the title. This will not only attract more eyeballs, but also because keywords are a vital component to a good meta description. 

As a final note, each URL should have its own unique title. Be sure to take the time to ensure this is the case with your site.

Metadata Keywords

When selecting top keywords, it can help to think of Google as the world’s biggest library. Each webpage counts as a “book.” The engine itself plays the role of librarian who must continually monitor the location of the books and locate materials upon request of users. And just like in a real library, there needs to be an organizational structure in place to help the librarian unearth relevant documents. That’s the role that keywords play in search engines.

All search engines leverage keywords as a sort of tagging system to organize web content into various genres based on given queries. This organizational system also incorporates metadata descriptions and URLs.

For this reason, it is important to employ the top keywords for a given piece of content in the title, the description, and the URL for the page. 

Additionally, since Google Hummingbird has altered the way keywords perform within the SERPs, it is important to vary the usage of keywords, their synonyms, and related phrases within the content as well. 

For instance, if you sell t-shirts online, you should include phrases like “red shirts,” “t-shirt sale,” and other relevant terms that will help Google hone in on your content.

Metadata Descriptions

When writing meta descriptions, it should always be your aim to entice or hook readers into clicking on the content, without misleading them with falsehoods or clickbait. 

This means that your description should include several elements:

• An emotional incentive
• Resolution to the incentive
• Information

What this means it that you will catch a reader’s attention with an emotional hook. Something like, “Frustrated with your site’s lack of traffic?” works nicely in the marketing realm. 

Next, resolve that emotional hook by offering a solution: “We can increase your site traffic by XX visitor per day!” This presents searchers with a tangible solution to the frustration you pointed out just prior. 

Then, provide concrete information about the site or page to let readers know what’s in store. Here is where your keywords are likely to be leveraged.

To effectively utilize this formula, you need to think strategically about how to reel in readers and get them to click on your site. 

What are they looking for? How you solve their problem? What makes your product/service unique? These are all things you should contemplate and address.

Meta Length Matters

The length of a metadata description is an important point to consider as there is no unanimous conclusions. A variety of SEO experts claim that descriptions should be brief, concise, and remain under the given character limit as this provides searchers with a quick answer.

Others believe that lengthier descriptions leave potential visitors craving more.

One important fact to consider is that if your meta description is too long, it will get cut off. Since Google has extended the length of meta descriptions to 320 characters, you have a fair bit of room to work with, however, those who are still new to writing metadata should stick to succinct descriptions that abide by the word count. Why? Because this will teach you the incredibly valuable skill of condensing information and selling a point in as few words as possible. 

If you ever (or have already) entered the realm of PPC advertising, you will see why this is such a power prowess to possess.

When you have mastered this ability, then you can feel free to experiment with longer meta descriptions.

Learning to write strong and effective metadata is a must for anyone who employs SEO strategies. Effectively optimizing this information via hooks, keywords, and quality information, is likely to drive oodles more traffic to your webpages.

What is your biggest problem with writing metadata? Does Google’s extended descriptions help or hinder your writing efforts?

The post How to Create SEO-Boosting Metadata appeared first on SiteProNews.

Visual content has come to dominate the internet landscape over the past several years. When people talk about link building tactics, text inevitably dominates the conversation. That’s because a surprising number of online organizations don’t think about images as an effective pathway to building authority. But alas, by getting other sources to point to visual creations, SERP power can be gained by a site.

No matter if we are discussing product images, custom infographics, or a knock-your-socks-off meme, images can be an epic resource for building powerful new links.

If you are looking for effective new ways to build authority with link building, look no further. Here we will be exploring the basics of image link building and how you can gain a potential boost in the SERPs with your own visual masterpieces.

Create Your Own Images

The only way image link building can be an effective practice for a brand is if they have a pool of unique images that were created by the organization; you can’t build links on what isn’t yours to begin with.

If you can snap photos of your business’s product or service offerings (and let’s be honest – you can), there is no reason you for you to not be creating unique images. You can do the same with employees at work (if applicable), and even ask for user-submitted images. And there’s the added bonus that asking for user-generated content can result in some pretty epic marketing campaigns.

Outside of just mere photographs, your business can also take the time to produce charts, infographics, memes, and a variety of other image-based content.

When creating image content from scratch, however, it is important that you employ a unique and eye-catching design. If you are going to assemble an infographic, be sure to include original research that adds value to the target audience’s life, professional or otherwise. Both factors also ensure that no one else can try to claim ownership over your creative endeavors.

Take some time to really consider how you can make your image stand out among the competition while still aligning with your brand.

Label Images Accordingly

One mistake that many businesses make quite often is that they fail to label their images. This is unacceptable as Google and other search engines require this data to crawl and identify images. To make sure your image is optimized accordingly, sort out the information below:

• File name: Don’t label your picture of a piece of pizza at your restaurants as “P_1254.jpg.” Instead, change the name to “peperoni-pizza-tonys-restaurant.jpg.”
• Image size: The size of your image has a massive impact on your site’s load time. If your file size is 2500×1000 pixels and isn’t a giant infographic, consider condensing it to about 250×150.
• Alt text: Ensure your alt text accurately describes the picture while remaining brief. This info helps search engines identify what your image is.
• Caption: Relevance is a significant ranking factor for images as well.

For these areas, anytime you can naturally use a keyword, do so. This is how you help in making your own images easily searchable.

Build New Links

There are a variety of ways to build links with images.

The first (and easiest) way is known as image link reclamation. Here, you are claiming links that should have been yours (since folks are using your images).

Start by compiling a database of images you already own: Logos, employees snapshots, product photos, etc. Next, locate websites that are using these assets by uploading the picture to Google Images, TinEye, Image Raider, or a similar reverse lookup tool. Once you have found any sites utilizing your image, reach out to them asking them to link back to your site on the replica.

The next link building strategy is just good ol’ fashioned digital promotion. If you have created an infographic or other valuable image that you think others could gain from, write a blog about it and plaster the infographic and a link to the writing all over social media. Don’t stop there; you can reach out to the long list of infographic submission sites. Not only do these sites help promote your work, but many of them will give you links as well.

Additionally, you can also use your infographic to gain guest posts on other websites. The only difference between this and guest blogging is that you have a ready-made asset to pitch to other website owners. If you get takers through this avenue, some will merely repost your infographic; others will want an original post to accompany it, so be ready to do some writing.

If doing all the research and design work involved with creating an infographic isn’t something that you are interested in, however, you can still gain backlinks with something as simple as a meme. For this tactic to gain flight, you need to create an appealing and humorous meme that blog owners will want to utilize.

Be aware, however, that the success of this tactic relies exclusively on you sense of humor and ability to relate to others. If you don’t have a funny bone in your body, this strategy likely isn’t for you.

In the SEO landscape, images are one of the most neglected and overlooked resources. Many organizations have a search optimization goldmine right on their desktops and don’t even know it. Be sure to optimize your images to the fullest and promote them properly. Doing so could give your business a big boost in the SERPs.

Have you failed to properly optimize your images? Do you think that infographics are still as valuable as they used to be?

The post Image Link Building 101: How to Gain Authority with Visuals appeared first on SiteProNews.

“If you build it… you may still need Google AdWords.” – Jennifer Mesenbrink, Social media marketer and eChannels Manager at ComEd

No matter your niche, pay-per-click (PPC) advertising can likely serve to provide your business with far-reaching gains.

If your brand seeks to drive increased traffic, downloads, conversions, or sales, PPC advertising should be on your radar as a profitable marketing tactic.

As the number of businesses investing their marketing dollars in paid search begins to reach critical mass, it is imperative that you understand how to properly dissect your paid adverts to maximize the gains your business can receive.

With the wealth of content online showing how to measure PPC success, it can be challenging to decipher which metrics are most impactful, and which are less relevant to your campaign’s interests.

To help you sift through the noise and develop the most profitable PPC campaign possible, here are 7 key metrics to producing highly effective paid adverts.

1. Impressions

Impressions indicates how many individuals have seen your advert. It helps to provide a measure on the search volume a given campaign or keyword receives.

This is vital for determining which keywords are prosperous and which are holding your campaign back.

For instance, if a term you are using only generated 10 impressions over the course of a month, you know that it is a dud. If you have a different keyword that garners 1,000 impressions a month, you will likely want to optimize your campaign around this phrase.

2. Cost Per Click (CPC)

Your cost-per-click, or CPC, is the average amount that your brand spends on a single click to its website. This data can be analyzed at an account level, but it will likely serve a greater purpose by viewing the CPC for various keywords.

A good benchmark for these metrics will greatly differ from industry to industry. For example, in 2017, the term “bail bonds” was one of the most expensive keywords, with an average CPC of roughly $58. Most terms you target will come in well below this, but be aware that your industry may have a sizable impact on pricing.

This metric will not only tell you how much it costs to gain a click to your site, but also provides business owners with an estimated budget to reach specific goals.

3. Click-Through-Rate (CTR)

While your CTR is a vital metric to monitor, this one comes with a bit of baggage as it is found by leveraging two other metrics.

The first is clicks.

Clicks are essentially the entire goal of PPC advertising; to get folks to click on something you want them to see. Clicks indicates the number of people who clicked your ad and landed on your site or optimized landing page.

To get your CTR, take the number of clicks your campaign generated and divide that by the number of impressions received. Doing this will provide you with the number of people who saw your ad and clicked on it.

This number indicates the quality of your advert or targeted keywords. If you have a low CTR, it could be due to poor copy or irrelevant keywords. Conducting a bit of A/B testing can help you determine the underperforming element.

4. Conversions

Conversions are the outcome you aim for a user to take. Depending on the goals you have established in Google Analytics, this could be engendering a phone call, gaining a download, acquiring an email address, driving a sale, or any number of other objectives.

While this number is vital to monitor and measure as it indicates how many people are taking the desired action, it tells a much larger (and more informative) story when analyzing conversion rates.

5. Conversion Rate

Your conversion rate is the number of conversions your campaign received, divided by the number of clicks it generated. The outcome is the percentage of individuals who clicked on your ad and proceeded to convert.

This number indicates how well-optimized your campaign or landing page is. If folks are clicking through to your website, but quickly bouncing off, you might be targeting irrelevant keywords. If users land on your site, stay for a good while, and then leave, the next step(s) you want them to take may not be clear.

Look at where and when you are losing your potential customers as this will give you an indication of where your campaign could use a little TLC.

6. Cost-Per-Conversion

No matter your company’s definition of what a conversion is (based on your goal), this metric tells you how much it costs to gain each conversion.

To determine your cost-per-conversion, divide the number of conversions generated by your campaign by the amount of money spent.

While many consider this to be the single most important metric to monitor during a PPC campaign, there is one (depending on your goal) that will always trump all others.

7. Return on Investment

To determine your campaign’s actual return on investment (ROI), you need to be able to track a lead all the way from click to close. Additionally, you’ll want to measure the amount of revenue you earned per lead.

While this may sound complex and daunting, it’s rather simple in practice.

To track consumers through their entire journey, you will need a good customer relationship management system like Nimble or HubSpot. Many CRM systems like these integrate with nearly any PPC platform; this enables you to determine which campaign brought a customer to you.

To establish your campaign’s ROI, just compare the sales data to the amount spent.

No matter how you cut it, PPC advertising is a complex beast with lots of ins and outs. Running a prosperous campaign and improving your brand’s efforts moving forward requires a keen understanding of the most important metrics to monitor, how they work together, and lots of practice.

Start getting some PPC experience by crafting compelling ads, avoiding the most common PPC pitfalls, and continually aiming to improve each of the above metrics and you can become a PPC superstar in no time.

What is your biggest PPC challenge? Do you think there is an important metric that wasn’t mentioned here?

The post 7 Key Metrics for Producing Highly Effective PPC Ads appeared first on SiteProNews.

“Consumers are more curious, more demanding, and more impatient than ever. . . AdWords has been redesigned to help you reach these mobile-first consumers in faster and easier ways. Today, we’re introducing more innovations available only in the new experience. From promoting your latest offers to finding ways to grow your business, these products can help you save time and boost performance.” – Anthony Chavez, Director of Product Management, AdWords

Last summer, Google added an array of new features to the AdWords platform including a new interface that Google noted was, “. . . the most powerful change [they’ve] made to how advertisers visualize and manage their campaigns in over 15 years.”

Following such bold changes, Google introduced exciting new AdWords features like promotion extensions, ad variations, new opportunities to meet business goals, and other AdWords amplification elements.

What has many excited, however, is the new custom intent audiences.

In mid-November Google announced a variety of new sales-driving AdWords components, including custom intent audiences. Custom intent audiences enables businesses to leverage the Google Display Network (GDN) to, “…make it easy for you to reach people who want to buy the specific products you offer–based on data from your campaigns, website and YouTube channel.”

Google explained the effects of the new audience option as followers:

“. . . If you’re a travel agency offering holiday getaways, Google could automatically create an audience of people shopping for “all-inclusive ski resorts” or “flights to Palm Springs.” We’ll then show you reach and performance estimates for each audience, so you can plan your campaign with precision.

The system works by employing machine learning technology to analyze a user’s current or previous AdWords efforts to produce a custom audience to target. The automatically generated audience is comprised of the most frequently surfed URLs and keywords for a given product or service search.

While this may sound like a wholly automated marketing solution, users do have some sovereignty over the process as custom intent audiences can be automatically created by Google, or users can take the topics and URL curation process into their own hands and create their own congregation to cater to.

Custom intent audiences give both novice and expert advertisers the tools to successfully expand beyond the bounds of Google Display Network’s canned audience groups. This gives business owners and advertisers the ability to utilize in-house data and information to reach consumers who are likely to find interest in the brand’s offerings.

No matter which option you feel more comfortable using, each presents the distinct potential for entering scads of new, prospective consumers into a business’s sales funnel.

Where to Find Custom Intent Audiences

Once you have navigated to the Display campaign portion of the interface, you can head to the audience page to see both types of custom intent audiences.

Start by creating or selecting an ad campaign to run. Next, select the “Targeting” button just below that. From here, you will be able to select “Intent;” this can be found sandwiched between the “Affinity” and “Remarketing” options.

Now you will be asked to choose between the automatically generated custom intent audience or to create your own.

Auto-Generated Custom Audiences

While crafting a custom audience is within the wheelhouse of some marketers, others might not feel so confident in the process.

For these folks, utilizing the automatically created audience is likely to be more their speed.

After selecting “Custom intent audiences: auto-created,” users will be presented with a myriad of possible audience options. Hovering over each of the audience labels brings up a small window with a description of where its contents came from and what it is comprised of, such as associated keywords and URLs from your account or related to a comparable product or service.

While this approach might feel overly minimalistic, the audience selections from the auto-generated portion produces extremely relevant prospects who are all very closely related. This is the defining feature of customer intent audiences, as opposed to the topic or placement-based options Display Network users have had up until this point.

Creating A Custom Audience

If you have opted to craft your own audience, after selecting the “Intent” option, click the blue “+” icon found near the words, “New Custom Intent Audience.” This will generate a popup where you will be asked to first name your audience.

After this, you can enter relevant keywords and URLs to devise a motif for targeting potential consumers through the GDN. With all your URLs and keywords in place, select “Create.”

You will then be taken back to the previous screen; here you can analyze your campaign’s estimated reach. Feel free to play with your audience criteria until you have generated a reach you find suitable.

This high level of audience detail and identification provides business owners with a much more refined method for for reaching prospects and ensuring that their ad dollars go as far as possible.

Custom intent audiences (while quite useful) still fall short in the demographic and geographically oriented wealth of audience targeting options presented by social destinations like Facebook and Instagram. This does not mean that Google’s targeting features are not headed in the right direction, it’s just important to call out the limitations.

While Google still has some way to go until its audience targeting capabilities matches the leader’s in the advertising market, custom intent audiences are helping to produce new fruitful leads for organizations promoting their offers through the Display Network. Get familiar with this new feature now, as it can help your brand earn tons of new leads and sales.

Will your business opt to leverage custom intent audiences? If so, do you plan on creating your own, or will you let Google do the heavy lifting?

The post How to Set Up Custom Intent Audiences in AdWords appeared first on SiteProNews.

“People are always going to go shopping. A lot of our effort is just: ‘How do we make the retail experience a great one?’” – Sir Philip Green, British businessman and chairman of the Arcadia Group

Digital retailers ask themselves how to create an inspirational shopping experience on a regular basis. Often, the answer starts with creating a great shopping ad.

The value that Google’s Product Listing Ads (PLA) provide to merchants and retailers the web over is quantifiable. Among the many changes to PPC in the past several years, a 2016 report from Crealytics highlighted that Google’s shopping ads have widely outpaced text-based adverts.

As detailed by Search Engine Land, Google’s Product Listing Ads are now responsible for, “. . . 43 percent of all retailers’ Google search ad clicks and 70 percent of non-brand clicks.”

With the massive advantage these ads hold over more traditional ad formats, it is critical for retailers to understand how to effectively optimize shopping promotions for maximum conversions; especially with holiday shopping in full effect.

If your brand is ready to up its PLA acumen, check out these 6 tips for increasing your shopping conversions.

1. Include the Right Keywords

Since Google’s Product Listing Ads don’t rely on keywords the same way that most AdWords formats do, you have limited control over when and where your adverts will pop up.

This, however, does not mean that you can ignore keywords.

To craft more effective ads, you will need to include relevant keywords in the product’s title to create a more convenient experience for the consumer. You will also want to ensure you list the product’s brand name, style, size, color, and any other pertinent details they may be looking for.

This will help shoppers to immediately recognize if you are advertising the very thing they are searching for.

While we’re talking about keywords. . .

2. Leverage Appropriate Negative Keywords

Negative keywords, which are those you want to exclude from your ad’s search criteria, are an essential element for optimizing your brand’s shopping ads.

While you cannot select the words you want your PLAs to display for, it is vital that you include the proper keywords that result in your ad not displaying. This will help to keep your promotion’s relevance score high and cost low.

For example, if your brand is selling only women’s boots, you will want to include words like [-kids], [-shoes], [-male], [-men], and so forth on your negative keyword list.

This will ensure that queries containing these words or phrases will be disqualified from seeing your advert.

You can leverage negative keywords for certain ad groups or at the campaign level, depending on your brand’s needs.

3. Utilize an Intriguing Image

As an online retailer, you should be aware of how powerful great images can be in driving sales. This is one of the main reasons why Google shopping ads hold such a competitive edge over text-based ads; visual appeal.

Products that leverage optimized images possess an added motivational layer that drives clicks and sales. Consumers find images convenient as they allow them to quickly assess features and appearances right from the SERPs.

For these reasons, it is critical for your brand to use high-resolution photos that differentiate your product and help to optimize your advert.

Furthermore, it’s important to ensure the image is the correct size to draw consumer’s attention. Google recommends 1080 × 566 pixels for ad images.

4. Ensure Your Merchant Feed is Always Up to Date

Your ad’s data feed is its lifeblood. This means that it should be updated daily to ensure accuracy.

Up to date product feeds not only reduce the Google error notifications that you’ll receive, but it also ensures that customers are getting the most current information on your products.

This is vital as it can lead to higher conversion rates, better ad placement, and a great customer experience.

Additionally, it is critical that you submit a valid GTIN, brand, and list the condition as new for all products. If you fail to do so, Google will likely reject your ad.

5. Employ Automated Extensions

Automated extensions for shopping ads were implemented back in 2015, and they can be the differentiating factor for your adverts.

These extensions utilize the information from your feed to automatically highlight certain aspects or special promotions such as free shipping. Some of the extensions that you can leverage in your PLAs include merchant promotions (which shares discounts or promo codes) and product ratings.

Product ratings are highly important as these provide a consumer rating at the bottom of the ad; a vital component in a shopper’s decision-making processes.

To become eligible for the product rating extension, you will first need to amass 50 or more product reviews in total, with at least three on any individual product you promote.

Once this criteria has been met, you can fill out the product rating request form and await Google’s response.

If you are having trouble accumulating this many critiques, consider utilizing some incentive techniques for gaining reviews.

Google’s Product Listing Ads have quickly become a boon for online retailers. While the ad format has proven to be a success among merchants and consumers, your brand can still rake in conversions by properly optimizing adverts.

Be sure to utilize these tactics along with other PLA best practices to maximize your sales during the holiday season, and beyond.

Has your brand leveraged Product Listing Ads in the past? If so, how have they performed in comparison to more traditional AdWords formats?

The post 6 Tips for Creating Shopping Ads that Convert appeared first on SiteProNews.

“There’s an app consolidating phenomenon where people spend time on fewer and fewer apps. . . So, if you want to reach out to your consumers on mobile, you have to be considering Messenger.” – Kemal El Moujahid, Facebook’s Product Manager for Messenger

Facebook is the proud owner of one of the world’s most popular apps.

I’m not talking about the Facebook app itself, nor am I referencing Instagram. The app in question is Facebook Messenger and its 1.3 billion active users.

The social website’s standalone messaging application has grown to be nearly as popular as the social network itself. Facebook, however, is not treating the app as a mere extension of its core service. No, Facebook is quickly spinning the product out to be its own unique ecosystem where over 2 billion messages are exchanged each month and many services are touted.

With the unbridled success the application has achieved, it comes as no surprise that the company has been seeking – and succeeding in – finding a myriad of ways for businesses to leverage Facebook Messenger.

Last year alone, Facebook brought three substantial, business-focused updates to the app so that brands could interact with their followers in new and exciting ways.

If you are interested in what Facebook’s messaging service has to offer your organization, check out the new features that accompanied each of 2017’s Messenger updates.

Messenger 2.0

On April 18^th of last year, at Facebook’s F8 conference, the company unveiled Messenger 2.0 and all the awesome features that went along with it.

For this update, Facebook brought out the big guns and made some significant changes to the platform. The most noticeable of which is the “Discovery” tab; a section dedicated wholly to business offerings.

Represented by a hexagon logo, the Discover tab features businesses who tout popular chatbots, along with a slew of categories where users can find relevant offerings. Some of the categories include education, food and drink, lifestyle, news, productivity, shopping, and many others. Additionally, the Discover tab features a search field if you’re trying to find something specific.

Another important feature this update boasted was chat extensions.

Chat extensions serve as a way for multiple people to interact with a business chatbot simultaneously. For example, if users in a group discussion wanted to hear a Taylor Swift song, one would simply tap the “+” icon, choose Spotify, enter the name of the song, and hit “Send to Group.” Doing so would drop the song in the thread where users can listen to it.

This feature is not limited to mere music and can be applied to making food reservations, travel plans, and tons of other use cases.

Smart Replies was another addition to Messenger 2.0 which added what is essentially automated answers to frequently asked questions for brands who don’t employ AI counterparts.

While these were the most notable additions, you can check out the rest of the features added to this update in Facebook’s Messenger 2.0 blog post.

Messenger 2.1

Shortly after the April update, Facebook rolled out yet another powerful update to the Messenger platform.

This time, the company placed much of its focus on implementing and uplifting its natural language processing (NLP) capabilities. This addition helped the platform identify key information within messages to create a better user experience for consumers:

“This first version can detect the following entities: hello, bye, thanks, date & time, location, amount of money, phone number, email and a URL. This is the first step in bringing NLP capabilities to all developers, enabling brands to scale their experiences on Messenger.”

This new inclusion helps ensure that users obtain speedy and accurate assistance from bots. This is of great importance after Facebook’s AI bots hit a 70% failure rate back in February.

It’s likely that this failure is also what lead to the incorporation of the handover protocol; a way for humans to take over conversations from chatbots when special support is called for.

Alongside these updates, Facebook also implemented an expanded set of Page buttons within the app. These are intended to be placed on business pages to drive consumers to the brand’s messaging experience. The new CTAs include Shop Now, Get Support, Get Updates, Play Now, and Get Started.

The final notable feature is the platform’s new seamless payment flow which is a contemporary SDK that enables customers to make payments through a single step process, greatly reducing transaction friction. This, however, is still in beta and only available in the U.S.

Messenger 2.2

In the most recent update, the release of Facebook Messenger 2.2 brings with it additional NLP abilities; this time around, Chinese, Dutch, French, German, Italian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Spanish and Vietnamese have been added to the roster.

Messenger now also features a Customer Chat Plugin (which is in closed beta) that enables businesses to carry on conversations with customers in Messenger and on their website, with the ability to transition back and forth without losing the conversation’s history. This opens up new ways for consumers to start and maintain a dialog with a variety of brands.

Additionally, Facebook has implemented a Broadcast API. This new feature empowers organizations with the messaging subscription to blast out communications to a number of subscribers simultaneously. The API request can be refined to send out updates to only a select audience.

For instance, a brand could elect to send out a newsletter update to all of its subscribers. Alternatively, that same brand could shoot out a more specific update to only those who would find the information relevant.

While there are a few other updates to take note of here, you can check those out in Facebook’s Messenger 2.2 blog post.

There’s a lot of Messenger features and information here for business owners and advertisers to process. Dig into Facebook’s update posts to see all the features not mentioned here and how you can begin implementing these offerings to your audience.

What new features do you feel are currently missing from Facebook’s Messenger app?

The post How Facebook Beefed Up Messenger for Businesses appeared first on SiteProNews.

From analytics and advertisements to calendars and feature-rich online docs, Google provides small business owners with a variety of resources to manage and grow their brands.

Many of the business services that Google provides have been bundled together into a powerful package known under its more recent branding of G Suite.

As a small business owner, there is a good chance that you are already leveraging Gmail, Drive, and some of Google’s other business-focused offerings. If this is the case, you might be wondering why you would start paying for something that you’re largely getting for free.

Today, we are going to examine why paying for the advanced features of G Suite – a $10 per month package – is worth the investment and can help you run the entirety of your business.

Gains to Gmail

Gmail is a foundational element for every Google account.

If you leverage the search giant’s free email services, you are touting an email address that looks something like “account@gmail.com.” In addition to the email account, you also gain access to 15GB of storage across Gmail and Google Drive.

While this might work fine for someone who gets most of their gigs on Upwork, as a small business your customers are seeking something that indicates they can trust you; and an email anyone can get their hands on doesn’t exactly elicit faith.

If your brand opts to upgrade to G Suite, you gain a personalized business email that reads something like “account@yourbrand.com.” This is a bigger benefit than it may seem as this also enables you to create mailing groups for monikers like “sales@yourbrand.com.”

Moreover, the paid version of these offerings provides you with double the storage capacity – 30GB – which is sure to come in handy with your entire organization operating through Gmail and G Suite.

Hangouts Enhancement

Google Hangouts is the search engine’s chat and video conferencing solution. The free version of this service enables users to chat with up to 100 other individuals in a single conversation. The video calling portion is capable of housing up to 10 people at once.

When users upgrade to G Suite, however, two new features become available.

The first, Hangouts Meet, ups the video conferencing capacity to 30 individuals who can gain access to the feed with only a shared link; no sign-ins or plugins necessary.

The second feature – Hangouts Chat – is a mobile chat application where colleagues can discuss projects, attach files from within G Suite, and utilize other elements not available to standard Google Hangouts users.

Deepening Drive

Google Drive is the collaboration center for teams; here, various files can be shared and worked on as an organization.

The standard version of this app enables 15 GB of storage and allows users to categorize files and use the search feature to find specific items. Additionally, users can share files with co-workers through their email address.

For G Suite users, however, 30GB of storage is granted alongside the option to upgrade to unlimited storage for $10 per month per user. Additionally, teams also gain access to Team Drive; a feature that allows for a singular Drive where all docs and files can be accessed without having to provide permissions for each individual item.

Furthermore, when using Drive on Android, users are provided with a “Quick Access” section which will show recently opened docs or those you might need based on communications with colleagues.

Supplemental Sites

In addition to the powerful augmentations that users can get their hands on with G Suite, Google also provides business professionals with Sites; an app that essentially serves as an intranet wherein employees can access all of the data an organization wishes to share with them or outside sources.

A drag-and-drop interface eliminates the need to possess coding or design skills while enabling custom-made sites to be created with ease. Additionally, Sites features custom security settings that dictates who can gain access.

All of this while remaining mobile-optimized and responsive.

Crafty Calendar

While many people live by Google Calendar, the G Suite version comes equipped with an intelligent scheduling feature, capable of predicting times when you and your co-workers or employees will be available.

The application uses this information to suggest meeting times, making scheduling easier than ever.

Clever Cloud Search

Bringing together all of these features is Google’s search algorithm. The company applied this system to the G Suite via Cloud Search; an intelligent search function capable of tracking down emails, folders, files, people, or anything else within the company’s database.

Cloud Search also provides G Suite users with informed suggestions as they search, based on recent interactions.

If you are looking for something across your organization but aren’t sure where it is stored, Cloud Search is the easiest way to find it.

These valuable features and applications indicate that Google is attempting (and succeeding) at positioning itself as a business service contender alongside offerings like Microsoft Office.

If you’re already making use of Google’s many free applications, transitioning to G Suite is a minor (albeit powerful) shift that will enable you to manage nearly every aspect of your business with a single, unifying service.

The best part of G Suite is that if you find yourself wondering if it is a sound investment for your brand or not, you can take advantage of the company’s 14-day free trail.

Do you think that G Suite would be beneficial to your brand? What feature do you wish G Suite possessed?

The post How G Suite Can Revolutionize Your Business Operations appeared first on SiteProNews.

“I get a 100% email open rate,’ said nobody ever. All the more reason to place Facebook ads targeting your own email list.” – Mari Smith, Social Media Speaker, Consultant, and Facebook Marketing Expert

With more the 2 billion monthly active users, Facebook is one of the most effective advertising channels on the web. Which is exactly why the social network raked in $9.16 billion in ad revenue in the second quarter of 2017.

Every day, businesses turn to Facebook to boost their awareness, downloads, sales, and other vital metrics.

For beginners, however, the company’s advertising platform can seem a bit complicated and daunting.

It’s time to demystify Facebook advertising for novice users and discuss the fundamentals of creating a campaign.

If you’re ready to learn how to use Facebook advertising to reach new audiences, here are 6 steps for creating an ad campaign on Facebook.

1. Establish Your Goals

Before you dive into ad creation mode, you must first consider why you are creating the ads to begin with.

By establishing the goal(s) of the adverts, you have a definitive intention in mind; after all, if you don’t know what your target is, you’re sure to miss it.

Moreover, when we get to the next step of the process, you will need to select a marketing objective; it’s best to know this ahead of time.

Some appropriate examples of advertising goals might be:

• Generate sales
• Increase website traffic
• Acquire new leads
• Boost event attendees

Once you establish why you’re advertising, you can move on to the next step.

2. Access Facebook Ads Manager and Choose an Objective

All Facebook ad campaigns will be conducted and overseen through the site’s Ad Manager tool. This can be accessed simply by clicking “Create Ads” in your account dropdown menu.

Once you’ve accessed the Ad Manager, you can manage your progress on the left side of the screen.

To get your first campaign started, we’ll need to select a marketing objective.

Here you will find a variety of potential options, broken down into 3 categories:

Awareness

Awareness goals are designed to reach individuals who are likely to be interested in your product, service, or brand. These objectives include:

• Boost your posts
• Promote your page
• Reach people near your business
• Increase brand awareness
• Increase your reach

Consideration

These are used to compel users to find out more about your brand and what it offers. Consideration objectives include:

• Traffic
• Engagement
• App installs
• Video views
• Lead generation
• Messages

Additionally, the Facebook Ad Manger gives more info about each of these categories.

Conversion

This category contains goals aimed at driving sales or converting users in another way. Objectives include:

• Increase conversions on your website
• Increase engagement in your app
• Get people to claim your offer
• Promote a product or catalogue
• Get people to visit your shops

After selecting your objective, name the campaign and move on to the next step.

3. Determine the Audience

Selecting the right audience characteristics is vital to the success of your campaign. These folks can be customized using the following features:

• Location – This is a user’s location, down to a mile radius.
• Age
• Gender
• Languages
• Interests – This includes an individual’s interests, activities, hobbies, and so forth.
• Behaviors – This includes device usage, buying habits, and similar information.
• Connections – This determines who the ad will be shown to, based on their Facebook page, app, and event connections, or lack thereof.

Additionally, you can elect to exclude folks based on the same information found in the “Interests” section. These work the same as negative keywords in AdWords.

For the best results, try to get as specific as possible with your audience selections.

4. Choose Your Ad’s Placement

Here is where you will select where your advert shows up for your audience. Facebook suggests Automatic Placements which, “. . . will automatically be shown to your audience in the places they’re likely to perform best. For this objective, placements may include Facebook, Instagram, Audience Network and Messenger.”

Choosing this option allows Facebook to optimize the placement of your ads for the best results, at the lowest cost. This is the best choice for new advertisers.

If you’re feeling brave, you can choose from a slew of positions within Facebook, Instagram, Audience Network, and Messenger. If you go this route, it’s wise to reference this ad placement for marketing objectives guide.

5. Set a Budget and Schedule

Next up is to set your campaign budget. It’s important to remember that the number you input is the maximum amount you seek to spend. You can, however, toggle between daily and lifetime maximums.

Next, choose if you’d like your ad to begin running today, or on a set time and date, for a finite amount of time.

With this squared away, you can get down to the fun stuff.

6. Create Your Ad

When creating a new ad, the first thing you need to do is select its format. The options include:

• Carousel – Features two or more scrollable images or videos.
• Single image – You can create up to 6 variations for no extra charge.
• Single video – Contains a single video.
• Slideshow – Create a looping video with up to 10 images.

The availability of different formats may change depending on the objective you selected for your campaign.

Now, either upload your own image or browse Facebook’s library of free stock images to use for your ad. Facebook will provide the recommended sizes and ratios for images and videos to the right of the image/video uploader.

Finally, add your advert’s copy. Work hard on crafting compelling copy that directly speaks to your identified demographic.

If you have trouble with any of these components, there is a multitude of Facebook ad design guides to maximize conversions out there.

Finally, click “Confirm” to put in your payment information and purchase your ad set.

Now that you understand how to set up a Facebook ad campaign, dive in to some of today’s optimization best practices to refine your knowledge and maximize your advertising potency.

What type of ad will be your first on Facebook? What other Facebook ad questions do you have?

The post Getting Started with Facebook Ads: Advice for Beginners appeared first on SiteProNews.

“Good SEO work only gets better over time. It’s only search engine tricks that need to keep changing when the ranking algorithms change.” – Jill Whalen, SEO consultant, speaker, and writer

It’s no secret that link building is one of the single most critical skills in the entire SEO discipline. Learning the process of successfully building fruitful links across the web is the culmination of a variety of abilities: Content mastery, networking, sales, digital marketing, psychology, and more.

Even if this sounds like a challenge, link building is a must for generating increased traffic.

Because of the hardships associated with link building, many marketers opt to partake in what’s know as black hat tactics.

Before we explore what some of the most prevalent black hat link building schemes are, let’s take a moment to examine what black hat link building is in general.

Defining Black Hat Link Building

The term “black hat” refers to the dynamic of old western movies where the good guys wore white hats and the bad guys wore black.

Following this logic, black hat link building is the process of building links with the sole intent of duping Google’s algorithms for higher rankings for certain phrases.

These links are often spammy and are housed on pages that are clearly not optimized for the users; they exist strictly to leverage the clout of the link to help the page rank.

Black hat link building goes against the rules that Google has established. This means that operating outside of Google’s guidelines can easily get your site penalized, demoted, or outright banned from the SERPs. The punishment depends on the infraction, but they are all undesirable for those looking to build a long-term online existence.

With that basic understanding of what we’re talking about, let’s explore common black hat link building tactics that will land you on the wrong side of Google.

6 Types of SEO-Harming Black Hat Links

As the very essence of black hat SEO revolves around finding new ways to “game the system,” there are a variety of unsavory link building tactics that can get your site penalized by the Google Gods:

1. Blog Comments

Black hat blog comments are most typically created in mass and point to spun content. The comments tend to add zero value to the overall conversation and are often posted on sites that have no moderators. This is usually easy to spot as there are often scores of other spammy comments found here as well.

2. Wiki Links

Several years ago, a popular black hat link building tactic was to employ software that would create pages on wiki sites with links pointing to your webpage.

In typical fashion, the pages created by these platforms were often low quality and not maintained by anyone, meaning that it merely consisted of spun content that would quickly be flagged by Google.

3. Bookmarks

Bookmarks are considered links on websites like Reddit or Stumbleupon that enable people to post a link alongside a short description. While there is nothing wrong with this in general, black hat marketers utilized digital tools (like those described above) to generate massive amounts of bookmarks to be published on all manner of bookmarking sites; not just the reputable ones.

Because of the nature of the sites these bookmarks were posted on, site owners typically ended up paying the price.

4. Purchased Links

In the black hat heyday (and today still, though to a lesser degree) there are scads of sites dedicated to selling links on sites based on their PageRank score. Many of these sites operated in an auction format, with the best quality links going to the highest bidder.

These days, Google has become exceptionally well-versed in identifying and devaluing bought links.

If you are buying a link on a site today, ensure it has a “nofollow” meta tag to inform Google you are not attempting to increase your rankings through this method.

5. Forum Profile Links

This method leverages software to create various fake accounts across a myriad of forum sites and places links to the user’s website within the profile description.

These accounts were an extremely easy and effective way to generate thousands of backlinks. Today, however, Google rarely indexes these types of links and has established a method for depreciating their value to where this is a relatively fruitless pursuit.

6. “Web 2.0” Profile Links

While the term “Web 2.0” is antiquated at this point, it is still widely used when referring to gray and black hat link building communities.

This phrase is used to characterize sites that enable users to create new pages with unique URLs.

This is essentially the same tactic leveraged in forum profile link building, only using more reputable destinations.

While there isn’t anything wrong with doing this naturally, when hundreds or thousands of fake accounts are created for building links, Google tends to take notice.

The Consequences of Black Hat Link Building

If your brand is found guilty of violating Google’s webmaster guidelines, you are likely to be served a penalty from the search giant; the seriousness of the transgression will end up dictating the severity of the punishment. These penalties could last for a few weeks, a few months, or until the issue has been rectified.

There have been many high-profile instances of this happening.

In 2011, JC Penny was found to have purchased many links targeting certain keywords. As a result, the company had to utilize its resources to take down an untold number of the bought links; it took the retailer several months before they started to recover from the wrath that Google unleashed.

This is important to keep in mind because in the worst-case scenarios, your site could even end up getting banned from Google’s search engine for life.

In the end, black hat link building methods are generally not worth it. The risk far outweighs the reward; especially if you are trying to build a legitimate, long-term online business.

If you are trying to build a reputable brand, stick to today’s link building best practices and keep refining your content and networking skills.

Do you think black hat tactics can be useful for legitimate businesses?

The post 6 Black Hat Link Building Tactics that Will Tank Your SEO appeared first on SiteProNews.

“Lots of companies don’t succeed over time. What do they fundamentally do wrong? They usually miss the future. I try to focus on that: What is the future really going to be?” – Larry Page, Co-Founder of Google and CEO of Alphabet, Inc.

There is no company in the world more obsessed with innovation than Google.

This is evident in the myriad of changes coming to the lifeblood of their business, the illustrious SERPs.

Outside of major transitions like mobile-first indexing, the company is altering a variety of functions and features related to desktop and mobile search pages. In recent months, the search giant has announced or begun testing a variety of SERP alterations that seek to expand, enhance, and otherwise reshape search results.

Let’s look at what’s transpiring within Google’s search engine results pages.

1. Search Snippet Shifts

Search snippets (the bit of text that lives below the links for various results) have recently been confirmed to be increasing in length and will soon be more dynamic.

As a Google spokesperson told Search Engine Land:

“We recently made a change to provide more descriptive and useful snippets, to help people better understand how pages are relevant to their searches. This resulted in snippets becoming slightly longer, on average.”

The user-friendly blocks of text that describe how a page relates to a given query are currently restricted to 160 characters. Under the altered state, however, these snippets have grown to roughly 230 characters, on average.

In most cases, the snippets will dynamically change, depending on the nature of the query; these are designed to answer the user’s question without forcing them to click on the linked page. If the answer is too complex to flesh out and will ultimately require a click to address, the snippet is likely to remain at 160 characters.

2. Featured Snippet and Knowledge Panel Additions

Alongside amplifying the search snippets, Google has also opted to expand select Featured Snippets, with more likely on the horizon.

Featured Snippets, for those who are unfamiliar, is the block at the top of the SERPs that provides an extracted answer from a given webpage.

Originally announced in Google’s Keyword blog, the company stated:

“Today, we’ve added more images and related searches inside select Featured Snippets to help you learn even more about your topic, or to discover new things related to your interest.”

In addition to expanding certain Featured Snippets, Google will also be augmenting its Knowledge Panel to incorporate related content or searches:

“For example, while looking at the Knowledge Panel about skiing, you’ll see related searches for sports such as snowboarding directly inside the result.”

While these are newsworthy changes on their own, Google still has a lot more up its proverbial sleeve.

3. Announcing the Answer Carousel

While currently in beta testing, rumors are swirling as Google has been spotted testing out a new feature that employs a carousel structure for various answer snippets to a given query.

This content seems to be picked from forum threads or similar answer pages where multiple answers are likely to be given. In addition to this new feature, Google is also stamping specific results with a “Best Answer” badge, which is likely the answer that receives the most positive votes within the thread it was pulled from.

While this feature is still in beta, it is easy to foresee potential problems relating to offensive and dangerously incorrect information infiltrating the SERPs once again.

4. Celebrities in the SERPs

In early December, Google started spicing up the mobile SERPs in a fun, new way: Celebrities answering commonly searched questions about themselves via video content.

These selfie videos will show up at the top of mobile search pages for questions like, “Can Will Ferrell really play the drums?” or “How many languages does Priyanka Chopra speak?”

Googling these terms on a mobile device will bring up pre-recorded videos of the celebs within a dedicated application.

As of now, Google is working with a small group of stars such as Nick Jonas, Kenan Thompson, and the aforementioned celebs with plans to expand outside of the traditional celebrity realm in the near future.

Now comes the real question: How do these changes impact SMBs?

How Recent Changes to the SERPs Can Impact SMBs

You’ve likely already postulated this for yourself, but these search alterations hold the potential to have a sizable impact on the organic search traffic earned by a myriad of brands across an assortment of verticals; and not necessarily in a positive way.

Google, however, has opted to remain largely silent in face of these concerns from webmasters, only echoing that, “. . . Search is not just about answering your questions — it’s also about discovery.”

While these transitions are clearly aimed at enhancing the consumer experience of Google search, it is equally as crystalline that the search engine is seeking to boost the time that users spend interacting with the SERPs, with little to no regard for how this impacts the traffic businesses receive.

More than just providing additional information in-engine, many of these changes also consume more real estate onscreen, driving organic results further down the page.

Over time, this means that what may become more important than ranking highly in the SERPs is to develop and deliver informative content that gets used in Google’s featured snippets or Knowledge Panel. Doing this will not only give your page prominent placement within the SERPs, but the organic traffic you stand to gain from this positioning is likely to be a significant driver of site rankings.

The lesson to take from this is to craft the absolute best, most user-friendly, and deeply informative content that you can possibly muster. Keep your answers within these long-form pieces succinct so that Google can feature your answer as a snippet.

As Google continues its very clear evolution, website owners and marketers will need to bend and unfold right alongside the search engine if they wish to survive. Take these changes into account when formulating your content and SEO strategies as they can be useful guides in your site’s maturation process.

How do you think these changes will impact high-rankings sites? What other mobile-focused changes do you foresee coming down Google’s pipeline?

The post 4 Ways Google is Changing Search Engine Results appeared first on SiteProNews.