FTC Updates Search Engine Ad Disclosure Guidelines

Back in 2002, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) established guidelines for the various search engines to follow when it came to distinguishing to the users what results are paid for and what results are natural, or free, listings. This included paid advertisements, paid placements, and paid inclusion programs.

Surprisingly, it is taken over 10 years for the FTC to update these guidelines despite the vast changes that have occurred with search engines, their products, and how advertising is integrated.

Yesterday the FTC released updated guidelines for the search engine industry and how it distinguishes between advertising and natural search results. Particularly, the FTC believes that in recent years it has become less easy for consumers to recognize what is paid and what is not. Their primary objective is to ensure that advertising isn’t misleading consumers into believing they are natural search results.

The letters note that in recent years, paid search results have become less distinguishable as advertising, and the FTC is urging the search industry to make sure the distinction is clear.

One of their concerns is the fact that paid ads and ad blocks aren’t clearly shown to be paid advertisement, with the labels that have significantly smaller text, or that are more he then on the top right corner of an ad block as opposed to the left corner. They believe consumers may not note the reference to paid advertising when it is over on the right side.

We have observed that search engines have reduced the font size of some text labels to identify top ads and other advertising and often locate these labels in the top right-hand corner of the shaded area or “ad block,” as is the case with top ads. Consumers may not as readily notice the labels when placed in the top right-hand corner, especially when the labels are presented in small print and relate to more than one result. Web research suggests that web pages are normally viewed from left-center to right, with substantially less focus paid to the right-hand side.

The use of shading ad blocks has often been used to differentiate between paid and unpaid listings. The most common example of this are the Google AdWords listings in the Google search results. However, the FTC has noticed that the background shading used by many search engines tends to be less visible when viewed on mobile devices and certain computer monitors.

We have observed that, increasingly, search engines have introduced background shading that is significantly less visible or “luminous” and that consumers may not be able to detect on many computer monitors or mobile devices. Reliance on this method to distinguish advertising results requires that search engines select hues of sufficient luminosity to account for varying monitor types, technology settings, and lighting conditions.

Instead, the FTC suggests that search engine should use prominent shading with a clear outline, a prominent border, or both.

Accordingly, we recommend that in distinguishing any top ads or other advertising results integrated into the natural search results, search engines should use: (1) more prominent shading that has a clear outline; (2) a prominent border that distinctly sets off advertising from the natural search results; or (3) both prominent shading and a border.

FTC also brings up social listings, such as the ones you see in Facebook’s Graph Search, or even Google+ influenced personalized results where some listings are displayed more prominently because of someone in that users personal network. If any of those listings are paid, with the FTC example of a listing for a recommended restaurant because the user’s contacts have enjoyed it, if there is any pay compensation for that being displayed in social results, it must be clearly noted.

With the popularity of voice activated search results, such as Siri, the FTC is also advising that if search results are delivered verbally, that there must be an audio disclosure to go along with it states it is a paid advertising, and that one the user can easily here and recognize as being paid ads.

The FTC knows that as search engines continue to evolve with different technologies to provide users with search results, but they also wants to ensure that any new ways of receiving or displaying search results in the future also include clear differentiation between paid and unpaid. Since the original letter in 2002, mobile and tablets have increased significantly, as well as types of platforms search engines use to display and promote information, such as mobile apps, social media and their own way of narrowing segments of search results, such as things like news results or blog search results. With this, the FTC wants search engines to follow these guidelines from the outset as they introduce new ways of displaying their results.

Online search is far from static, and continues to evolve. Indeed, in the past few years, the growth of social media and mobile apps, and the introduction of voice assistants on mobile devices, have offered consumers new ways of getting information. Regardless of the precise form search may take in the future, the long-standing principle of making advertising distinguishable from natural results will remain applicable.

The FTC sent out letters to what they considered the primary general-purpose search engines, which includes AOL, Ask.com, Bing, Blekko, DuckDuckGo, Google, and Yahoo. They also sent out letters to 17 specialized search engines, ones that specialize in specific market areas of shopping, travel, and local businesses that also display advertising.

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Let the Instagram vs. Vine Video Battle Begin!

Last Thursday, Facebook introduced a new way to share 15-second videos on Instagram. Today, new data from Unruly Media has found the number of tweets containing a 6-second looping video from Vine has almost doubled in just two months.

Meanwhile, the most recent iTunes Chart of free apps shows Vine ranked #7 and Instagram ranked #8.

In other words, let the battle between Video on Instagram and Vine begin!

To build momentum, a post on the Instagram Blog noted a couple of days ago, “Within the first 8 hours of launching Video on Instagram the community shared over a year’s worth of footage.”

Another post on the Instagram Blog listed a number of accounts that are using Video on Instagram, including:

• Tony Hawk, professional skateboarder — @tonyhawk.
• Almond Surfboards, handcrafted surfboard and accessories — @almond_surfboards.
• Wimbeldon, the oldest tennis tournament in the world — @wimbledon.
• Snoop Dogg, rapper and actor— @snoopdogg.
• Phoenix, alternative rock band from France — @wearephoenix.
• Madonna, singer-songwriter — @madonna.
• Karlie Kloss, fashion model — @karliekloss.
• Burberry, British luxury fashion brand — @burberry.
• Jamie Oliver, chef — @jamieoliver.
• Verve Coffee Roasters, Santa Cruz-based coffee roastery — @vervecoffee.
• Shay Mitchell, actress of Pretty Little Liars — @shaym.
• Jimmy Fallon, comedian and host of Late Night — @jimmyfallon.
• Charity Water, non-profit organization bringing clean drinking water to developing nations — @charitywater.

A third post on the Instagram Blog linked to a story on CNET: “Instagram users upload 5M clips in vid-sharing feature’s first day.”

Meanwhile, new data released today by video technology company Unruly found the average number of tweets containing a Vine link had risen from five every second during April to nine every second during the first three weeks of June.

Interest in Vine has grown exponentially since its launch earlier this year. It currently has more than 13 million users. With branded Vines four times more likely to be shared than video ads and mobile data traffic set to increase 13-fold between 2012 and 2017, advertisers have been quick to experiment with Twitter’s short-form mobile video platform.

Brands and agencies looking to make the most of this surge in Vine activity now have the chance to amplify, optimize and analyse the success of their Vine campaigns across the social web using the industry’s first end-to-end social video product set that was launched by Unruly today.

Advertisers will not only be able to create Vine content using Unruly’s Vine Talent Agency and evaluate Vines for shareability and effectiveness using Unruly’s ShareRank algorithm; they’ll be able to distribute Vine content to a global audience of 978 million users and benchmark the social footprint of their Vines against their competitive set.

“Vine and other platforms, most recently Instagram, are leading a revolution in social video sharing,” said Unruly COO and co-founder, Sarah Wood. “Mobile video consumption tripled in 2012; video is the fastest growing ad format worldwide and Vine is changing the social video landscape, six seconds at a time. Advertisers can get ahead of the competition, grow their social footprint and extend their mobile reach by including Vine as part of an always-on content marketing strategy.

Brand marketers who are serious about their content marketing strategy understand that there’s more to social video success than a YouTube view count. The social video ecosystem is developing rapidly to meet changing consumer habits and brands can now embrace a multitude of platforms across a fragmented media landscape to reach and engage their audiences wherever they’re discovering and sharing videos.”

Unruly is the first provider in the social video space to launch an end-to-end Vine technology product set. Brands and agencies can now:

• Create Vines: Unruly is building a network of ‘Vioneers’, experts in Vine content creation who can partner with brands to create Vines and re-purpose their longer-form videos;
• Evaluate Vines: Advertisers can use Unruly ShareRank™ to test the ‘shareability’ of their Vines pre and post launch;
• Distribute Vines: Unruly has launched a Vine app and a Vine Social Video Player so that advertisers can now distribute their Vines across the social web to Unruly’s audience of 978 million global unique users;
• Optimize Vines: Brands can optimize their Vine campaign performance by using Unruly’s Dynamic Creative Optimization technology to automatically display the best-performing Vine by campaign KPI;
• Measure Vines: Brands can track the social success of their Vine creatives and compare it to other Vine and video creatives in seconds using Unruly Analytics.

For marketers, it will be fun to watch the media coverage of the video-sharing horse race. But, it’s more important to listen quietly to the debate between the advocates of the 15-second video and the supporters of the 6-second looping video. Then, marketers should test these new approaches to video-sharing before adding one or both to their marketing mix.

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Linkable Asset Strategy: How to Pick & Prioritize Assets

When it comes to linkable assets, marketers often have a single objective: build as many links as possible (hence the name, “linkable asset”).

But if you’re only goal is links, you really aren’t harnessing the full ROI potential of your assets and likely missing out on some opportunities.

When done right, linkable assets can yield:

• Quality, editorial links from authoritative sources
• High-intent traffic
• Social shares and mentions
• A passive traffic stream for the life of the asset
• Monetization opportunities
• Qualified leads

To develop linkable assets that can fire on all cylinders, you really need to have a solid developmental process in place. And that process starts with gathering ideas based on a set of key factors and culminates with evaluating and prioritizing asset creation based on end goals and potentially budget. That way, you can ensure to your linkable assets generate not only links, but leads, conversions and high-intent traffic as well.

Here’s a process for picking and prioritizing linkable asset development.

Keyword Research

Keyword research is the foundation for everything you do with SEO. From content mapping, to on-page optimization, to link building, keywords inform your search engine marketing efforts. The same goes for linkable assets: keywords drive concepts.

Everyone has their own means for discovering keywords. Mine centers around leveraging keyword tools, competitor analysis and mining proprietary analytics data to identify terms that are both relevant and traffic-driving. And it’s during this process that I aim to scale my keyword research efforts. Not only do I want to uncover relevant terms with commercial intent, but I’m also mindful of terms and phrases that are great candidates for linkable assets.

And just to be clear, I draw a distinction between linkable assets and content with commercial content, like sales-driven copy or SEO landing pages.

For me, linkable assets are typically informative, evergreen content plays that aren’t self-promotional or commercial (i.e., directly selling an organization’s product or service) in nature. The reason the purely informational is being is it’s markedly easier to acquire links for content that is genuinely useful, informative and without commercial intent. Your primary goal is links and nobody wants to link to your marketing collateral.

Examples of linkable assets (particularly those guided by keywords) include:

• Blog posts
• Informative guides (process-driven “how-tos,” consumer guides, product reviews, etc)
• eBooks
• Videos
• Infographics
• Ego bait pieces (group interviews, “best of” lists, etc)
• Free tools, widgets or apps

So getting back to the keyword research process…

Here, you should segment all your keyword opportunities in a spreadsheet and pair them with potential content partners (e.g., should you turn this keyword into a blog post? would it be better as an infographic? etc.).

Ninety-nine percent of the time there’s going to be overlap, where the same keywords can map to a variety of asset types. And overlap is fine. In fact, it’s encouraged so you can get maximum value out of your keyword analysis and topic strategy efforts.

I like real world examples, so say you run a site on family safety. A single, relevant, traffic-driving, mid-tail term like “home security cameras” can be turned into a range of overlapping content types, including:

• A blog post: http://safesoundfamily.com/blog/five-of-the-best-locations-for-home-security-cameras/
• A comprehensive consumer guide: http://safesoundfamily.com/p/outdoor-security-cameras-buying-guide/
• An informational landing page: http://safesoundfamily.com/p/video-surveillance-systems/

And frankly, that family safety site shouldn’t stop there. I can see that topic turned into videos, an infographic, a group interview and so on. So overlap happens, just be sure to vary your approach and the concept somewhat, depending on the type of asset you map it to so each asset is unique.

Another tip is to start riffing on topic ideas at this stage. Doing keyword discovery gets my creative juices flowing. And partnering keyword ideas with potential asset types spawns a lot of ideas.

To fuel creativity even more, you can copy keywords and drop them into Google search, Google Trends, BuzzFeed, Quora or Yahoo Answers for QA ideas for inspiration. Then, add your fleshed out topic ideas into a separate column paired with your keywords and your asset types, like this:

Search Demand

Another key factor you want to consider when picking topics is search demand. The number of potential users that are actually searching for a keyword is a data point you’ll use help prioritize topic selection.

The reason potential search demand is important is because we want this content to drive traffic. Again, this isn’t just about links. We want to develop a linkable asset that will drive passive traffic for the life of the asset. So as you’re qualifying and prioritizing your list of topic ideas, estimated search demand should factor in.

With keyword search data, typically we’re grabbing estimated monthly, exact match searches from the Google Keyword Tool. Also, if you have any proprietary data from any paid search campaigns, layer that in as well. It’s more valuable and actionable than estimated data since it’s proven to produce results for your specific site.

Traffic Intent

Even though search demand is a goal, you want to factor in the intent of that traffic. Passive traffic is great, but passive traffic that converts is even better.

Topics that align with the theme of the site not only drive high-intent, qualified traffic, but will typically net relevant links as well.

However, topics that are well-aligned with a site aren’t always that interesting to a linking audience. So sometimes you may need to sacrifice relevancy for “linkability,” which usually means lower intent traffic but a better chance for wider distribution and links. In those instances, you want to adjust your offer to match user intent (more on monetization later…)

In the linkable asset topic ideation document, I usually identify traffic intent as high, medium or low intent, again pairing it with keyword opportunities, search demand and asset types.

Linking Audience

Given we’re talking about linkable assets, you’d assume I would have led off with how your topic will appeal to a linking audience. For me, keyword discovery work best as a starting point, since it fuels the brainstorming process. But ultimately link potential will weigh heavily in the final stages when you prioritize topic selection and determine which linkable asset to launch.

However, to each his own. If it feels more natural for you to start with link potential, then do so. There’s really no right or wrong way to do this.

When it comes to links, the questions you should ask are:

• Who is our linking audience?
• Will this topic appeal to them?

When it comes to linking audience and appeal, it’s often driven by the type of asset you produce. If you’re publishing a group interview, you’ve got some level of built in publicity and link opportunities with everyone who participates. Then maybe you want to develop a broader topic that will be relevant and appeal to a wider swath of bloggers and resource lists.

With an infographic, maybe your link target is a high-authority publication, so the incentive for them to link is an exclusive, as well as a graphic you’ve tailored for their particular audience. And even though that topic may have anemic search demand and limited conversion potential, the authority and trust of getting a link from that publication is so valuable that it trumps all other factors.

In any case, we often do a lot of research on the potential appeal to a linking audience ahead of time. Since our goal is really to “stack the deck” in our favor, we look at:

• Number of links similarly-themed assets have acquired
• If there’s a strong “market” for this topic
• Should we replicate the asset and “do it better” or should we map our concept to a new asset

Now, the reason links are the primary objective here is because links are a force multiplier. By getting those links, you help float the trust, authority, and relevancy of your domain, which thereby lifts the “SEO value” of all pages on that domain (including your commercial sales pages), which in turn helps those pages perform better in the SERPs.

The links you attract will also help your asset directly with better SERP performance, which is why you factor in elements like traffic and conversion potential as well. In short, you want this asset to be working as hard as it can for you.

Monetization Potential

Finally, you want to ask yourself “can we monetize it?” (Hint: the answer should be “yes.”) Monetization potential is another factor you should weigh when selecting a topic. And by monetize I mean can we get conversions from it.

And the reason monetization is so valuable here is because you’re producing an asset with a potential for passive traffic, so you want it to have the ability to be a continuous lead source for your company.

With monetization, you want to determine which offer to expose. Should you expose a softer offer that maps better to informational searches and top-of-the-funnel visits, like a newsletter signup for example? Or should you push something close to sale, like a software trial or a product inquiry via form submit pop-up?

Typically, the intent of the user will determine your offer. Are they gathering information or are they further along in the buying cycle? Both are key questions to ask yourself. And even if you get it wrong at first, you can always (and should always) test different offers to find the one that performs the best.

And in the event you don’t have an offer that makes sense for your asset, create one. Figure out a way to capitalize on this traffic source, so you’re maximizing your assets potential.

Now, when it comes to monetizing your asset, I highly recommend you add your offer after you’re done with all link outreach. Why? No matter how awesome your content, it’s much harder to get sites to link to something that’s riddled with ads or aggressive in-line banner offers.

“Delayed monetization” is the move here, so you don’t kill your capacity for building links. Frankly, it’s not uncommon for us to wait months to add offers to an asset.

Prioritizing Your List

Now that you have your list of assets, topic ideas, goals and data points, you’ll want to prioritize which topics and corresponding assets you publish based on your goal values. Certainly links are your top priority, but what comes next?

Do you value traffic potential over, say, newsletter conversions? Is the link value so great that you’re willing to sacrifice topical relevancy and page-level conversions? Is the search demand anemic, yet the traffic intent is high?

Also, it’s worth noting that you can evaluate and prioritize at either the keyword or asset level. For the keyword level and using the “DIY home security” example above, let’s say the client only has the budget to develop and promote a single asset. And the client’s goals are in this order:

• Links
• Conversions
• Traffic intent

Assuming you’ve analyzed all your other keyword opportunities and narrowed it down to this vertical as the most promising, you’d probably have a section in your document like this:

Given the client’s objectives, it would make sense to prioritize keyword topic two: series of a consumer videos with individual reviews of popular brands. It appears that the link potential is high (many opportunities exist with video security companies that you review, particularly the smaller brands that don’t get much publicity). The client can monetize those reviews with a variety of offers once the outreach is complete. And traffic intent is moderate to high since you have consumers looking to make an informed decision before buying.

For more on linkable assets, check out:

• 9 Tangible Linkable Asset Ideas and How to Build Links to Them
• What are linkable assets and how do they keep on bringing you links?
• Improve Content Creation with Linkable Asset Classes
• 7 Tips For Finding Your Competitors’ Linkable Assets and RCS

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Do the PPC Engines Reward the Right Behaviors?

Years and years ago, when I was in graduate school, I read an article published in the Academy of Management Journal called “On the folly of rewarding A, while hoping for B“. Originally written in 1975, the article was already a classic, even at that time. Still, as with most college reading assignments, I approached it with disdain, prepared to extract what I needed for the next class exam and then forget about it.

I was wrong. The article has stuck with me, all these years later.

The article’s basic premise: “Reward systems are fouled up in that the types of behavior that are rewarded are those which the rewarder is trying to discourage, while the behavior desired is not being rewarded at all.” An example given in the article is businesses who say they are committed to total quality, yet incent and reward employees for shipping products on schedule, even with errors and defects.

What does this have to do with PPC? A lot.

One example of “rewarding for A while hoping for B” in PPC is the quality score conundrum. Ever since Google rolled out quality score in 2008, advertisers have struggled in their attempts to improve it, often to their detriment. The pursuit of high quality scores is frequently at odds with PPC results goals.

Let’s say that an ecommerce advertiser is using PPC to generate sales. ROI is their primary key performance indicator (KPI) – in other words, the advertiser wants the most sales at the lowest cost. But let’s say this same advertiser is also trying to optimize for quality score, and that their PPC manager is measured and rewarded in part based on quality score improvement.

Both Google and Bing have openly stated that click-through rate (CTR) is the primary determinant of quality score. An advertiser must improve CTR in order to improve quality score. So, the PPC manager who is trying to improve their quality score needs to increase CTR.

In ecommerce, though, high CTR often does not correlate to high ROI. In fact, it’s not uncommon to see the best ROI on ads with the worst CTR!

Carefully crafted ad copy will, by design, discourage unqualified prospects from clicking. That’s why it’s a good idea to include product prices in your ad copy – to prevent clicks from tire-kickers who are clicking on ads to compare prices, with no intention to purchase at that moment. Including the price in the ad precludes clicks from price shoppers.

In this case, though, unfortunate PPC managers are faced with goals that are almost mutually exclusive. They need to improve quality score to make a client or boss happy, and yet improving quality score means increasing CTR – and reducing ROI. It’s a no-win situation, because if the PPC manager is rewarded for higher quality score, the company faces a potential decrease in ROI.

Enhanced campaigns are probably the most egregious case of “rewarding for A while hoping for B”. When Google announced enhanced campaigns, they touted the ease of management.

“Tired of maintaining separate campaigns for each device? Good news – now you can’t! Just use bid modifiers instead!” The same thing goes for geotargeting, dayparting, and other “features” of enhanced campaigns – by introducing bid modifiers, Google claims to have simplified account management.

Why did Google develop enhanced campaigns? The prevalent belief is that the current AdWords system had become unwieldy, with features bolted on to the point that it was taxing their system servers.

Enhanced campaigns are Google’s answer to a system that had become, in their opinion, needlessly bloated and complex. In other words, Google launched enhanced campaigns with the hope of reducing the number of campaigns in the AdWords system, thereby making it easier for advertisers.

Alas, Google fell into the “rewarding for A while hoping for B” trap. In their quest to reduce the number of campaigns, they’ve actually increased them.

Google rewards advertisers (or at least experienced advertisers) with a nearly endless number of levers to pull to improve performance and ROI. We PPC managers use every tool in our arsenal to weed out non-converting traffic and improve our conversion rates. We don’t want to pay a penny more for a conversion than we have to.

Enhanced campaigns took away some of our levers, namely separating campaigns by device. We’re forced to come up with crazy workarounds that, more often than not, require more campaigns, not less.

Employing bid modifiers created a similar conundrum, in that we now have to organize our campaigns by bid modifier. Where in the past we may have had two campaigns, we might now have 10: one for each geo, daypart, and device modification percentage.

Google hoped to simplify the AdWords system, but by rewarding PPC managers with multiple levers, they’ve instead complicated the system by an order of magnitude.

Many advertisers also unwittingly “reward for A while hoping for B”, often with distractions and pop-overs on landing pages that pull visitors away from the primary conversion action. Don’t make this mistake! Align your goals with your ad copy, landing pages, and website – and don’t reward visitors for something other than what you’re hoping for.

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How to Make Your Keywords Fit Your Marketing Messaging

There is so much more to keywords than traffic.

They’re the biggest descriptor of your business, your self-identifier, and you don’t just use them in search. When you have those uncomfortable “So, what do you do?” conversations with the person next to you on an airplane, a keyword is one of the first things out of your mouth.

My point is that keywords are how people remember you, so you need to think more about how they reflect what you do rather than how much they’re searched when choosing the right ones for you.

My digital agency is rebranding, which means a new website, new logo, new target audience and new marketing messaging. That also means a whole new set of keywords. Here’s how we figured them out.

Who Are You?

Many dive into keyword research without first taking a hard look at the business itself. That feels backwards. Before you can know how you want users to find you, you need to know how the company positions itself.

You may already have a good idea if you’re working with company that’s been around for a while, but since we’re rebranding, we started from scratch. During our branding discussions, we asked questions like:

• If your company was a car, how would you describe it?
• How would you describe your company culture?
• What are your company’s core values?
• What’s your company’s mission? The vision?
• Who do you want to buy from your company?
• Who are the decision makers? Decision influencers?

Market Research

The first place to start in doing keyword research is with your users. Don’t get me wrong: Google’s Keyword Tools is great for brainstorming variations and validating your opinions with numbers, but you should never rely on a bot to tell you what your users are doing.

By putting together a simple survey in SurveyMonkey – or simply asking people in your local coffee shop if your target audience is more broad – you’re able to glean a lot about how users actually search.

How many of you have had the “you really don’t know what keywords your users would use to search for your business” conversation with a client?

Ask them questions like:

• How do you find a company for XXXX?
• What would you type into Google to find these companies?
• If you were looking for advice on XXXX, what would you do?
• What’s the most important thing you look for on a XXXX company’s home page?

When we did this, we sent out the survey to existing clients who fit our new target, CMO and marketing organizations and promoted through social media to garner feedback.

Informational vs. Commercial Searches

Your user research will tell you a lot about how people actually search, but you do ultimately need to run what they gave you through Google’s Keyword Tool to get an idea of traffic and Moz’s Keyword Difficulty to get an idea of what it’s going to take to see the fruits of your labor.

Traffic isn’t the last stop in the vetting process, though. Next, think about the type of query your keyword triggers. Users search because they’re looking for an answer to a question, and that comes with some sort of action. The two biggest are:

• Informational: Your user is still researching and just wants more information about a topic.
• Commercial: Your user is looking for a business and ready to buy.

You don’t want a commercial-based page ranking for an informational-based keyword because you’re failing to reach people at the right phase of the buying process.

Lastly Go To Google

Ultimately, you want to ensure you’re comparable with the company you keep, meaning the companies who are using your potential keywords should be your actual competitors, not just your search competitors. So, search for your keywords and see who’s ranking.

Look for similar things that your company and these share, like:

• Target audience
• Services or products
• Price points
• Messaging and positioning

For example, “web design company” has much more traffic but “web design agency” brings up a higher quality of businesses. This was further validated by our market research when we found more C-level marketers use agency over company or firm, and those are the people we are trying to reach.

Summary

Even if you aren’t going through a complete rebrand, you need to keep an eye on your keywords and ensure they still fit with how you do business. Users will continue to get savvier, search engines will become more sophisticated, and your company’s priorities will change, and making sure your keywords bring more to the table than just a high search volume will make sure you’re always positioning yourself right to your users.

Do you know a marketing visionary?
ClickZ will be honoring 10 thought leaders for their achievements and contributions to the online marketing industry. Shine a spotlight on those whose work has earned them exceptional repute. Call for entries ends Monday, July 22. Submit Your Nomination »

Google AdWords Dynamic Remarketing Launches For Merchants

Good news for Google advertisers looking to expand their advertising performance with dynamic remarketing for their products. Google has announced the launch of their dynamic remarketing program to all clients with a Google Merchant Center account. This pilot program is currently only available to those in the travel and education sectors, but they do plan to expand further later this year.

Here’s what the ads look like: 

These ads are remarketing ads, as merchants are able to create dynamic ads that feature products a visitor has previously seen on the company’s website, in order to remind those potential customers about the product. Google can also create those dynamic remarketing ads for merchants automatically.

Google has some impressive numbers coming out of what seems to be the beta test of this product with a limited number of Google Merchant Center users. For example, Sierra Trading Post saw two times higher click-through rates and a five times higher conversion rate when compared to traditional remarketing campaigns.

Google also does auto optimization behind the scenes, to adjust to serve the best performing layouts on a per impression basis. It will also automatically generate recommended, related and popular products to display in those ads. It also features the real-time bidding algorithm.

Using the dynamic remarketing requires a Google Merchant Center account. Currently, Google Merchant Center accounts are only available in Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, Czech Republic, France, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, Netherlands, Spain, Switzerland, United Kingdom, and United States. For more information on using dynamic remarketing, see this Google AdWords help article.

For more information on Google’s remarketing products, including the remarketing tag and remarketing with Google analytics, you can register for Google’s Learn with Google Webinar: Reaching the Right Audience with Remarketing, taking place Wednesday, June 26 at 1 p.m. ET.

Do you know a marketing visionary?
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Google Avoids Street View Fine in UK, Must Delete All Data

The UK Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) has served Google notice that it must delete any WiFi data it collected through its Street View operations within 35 days, but did not find enough evidence to levy a fine.

Google previously admitted that while carrying out its Street View image collection, the firm’s various cars also collected WiFi data from homes, an action that led to an ICO investigation.

While the ICO’s investigation of Google concluded last year, the organization has finally got around to dishing out some stern words, specifically, that Google should delete all WiFi data it collected within 35 days.

“Today’s enforcement notice strengthens the action already taken by our office, placing a legal requirement on Google to delete the remaining payload data identified last year within the next 35 days and immediately inform the ICO if any further disks are found,” said Stephen Eckersley, the ICO head of enforcement. “Failure to abide by the notice will be considered as contempt of court, which is a criminal offence.”

The ICO said that it did not find enough evidence against Google to show that the firm actually intended to collect the data.

“The early days of Google Street View should be seen as an example of what can go wrong if technology companies fail to understand how their products are using personal information,” Eckersley said. “The punishment for this breach would have been far worse, if this payload data had not been contained.”

A Google spokesperson provided the following statement:

We work hard to get privacy right at Google. But in this case we didn’t, which is why we quickly tightened up our systems to address the issue. The project leaders never wanted this data, and didn’t use it or even look at it. We cooperated fully with the ICO throughout its investigation, and having received its order this morning we are proceeding with our plan to delete the data.

According to the ICO, it thought that “detriment caused to individuals by this breach fails to meet the level required to issue a monetary penalty”, meaning Google faces no financial liability. 

This article was originally published on the Inquirer.

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Is Bing Places for Business Better Than Google+ Local?

As SEO experts, we want the search engines to provide robust, powerful and (preferably) free tools to help us get our jobs done. In April, Bing launched Bing Places for Business, replacing their previous product, Bing Business Portal. Rest assured, all Bing Business Portal data was migrated over to the new Bing Places for Business.

With this new product, this is our chance to take advantage of a new, easy-to-use tool to quickly optimize our local listings. With the rollout of the Google Carousel, there is no doubt these two search giants are getting ready to go back in forth in local search.

Additionally, with the recent announcement of Apple and Bing’s mobile search, is Bing getting ready to make a more serious run at market share attainment?

As I digress back to Bing Places, Ginny Sandhu, Senior Product Manager at Bing described the new product:

With Bing Places for Business claiming and verifying your business on Bing is quick and easy. Our most recent updates ensure that you can put your business in front of customers searching online for products and services you offer. We are committed to helping you connect with customers online and will be introducing more updates in the upcoming months, which will make it even easier to put your business online and promote it actively.

When thinking about SEO, Bing’s Duane Forrester emphasizes the importance of utilizing Bing Places for Business, “It can be a way to double dip in the SERP, as their Places listing data can appear, with them ranked up top in the organic stack.”

Bing’s goal it to provide businesses with tools to easily and quickly find local customers online. To meet this goal, Bing Places for Business includes a powerful bulk upload feature to manage multiple listings at once (no more emailing spreadsheets). This is one feature I enjoy from Google than I am glad Bing has brought about as well.

Making it even easier, Bing also provides an upload feature that supports the Google+ Local format, thanks Bing! So, you now have the tools to quickly manage your business reputation online. Here’s how:

Claim it

Go to BingPlaces.com and claim your listing. By claiming your listing, you are adding authority and trust, therefore helping your local organic rankings on Bing.

All the information you add in Bing Places for Business will trump other data sources and begin showing up on Bing. Finding your listing is easy. Just enter your phone number, or business name and location.

Edit it

If the information is inaccurate, here’s your chance to fix it. Add your business address, phone number, email, website, hours of operation, payment options, parking options, etc. You can even list top brands you carry at that location.

Make it Relevant

Within Bing Places for Business, you can see what categories have been automatically associated with your listing. Here you can pick new categories or remove categories that might be irrelevant. Take advantage of this feature to help your listing rank appropriately against relevant local searches.

Make it Pop

You have the chance to make your listing stand out for free, so do it. Add photos (up to 10) and videos (up to 5) and make your business shine.

Nothing draws a customer’s eyes to your listing better than an image. Remember, customers have a lot of options to choose from, so you may as well take full advantage and make your listing pop.

Make it Social

Unlike Google+, Bing is inclusive of all social networks. With Bing Places for Business, you can build your online presence by adding your Facebook and Twitter URLs. So, take advantage of all that social media work you’re doing and keep your social community connected to your local listing.

Summary

If you haven’t yet, check out Bing Places for Business to claim, edit, and control your listing while also making it pop and making it social. Is Bing Places for Business better than Google+ Local? Maybe not… yet. However, according to Bing, there are new and exciting features rolling out later this summer.

Since launching Bing Places for Business is the first step in the right direction, we’re excited to see what’s next and as stated previous, I am sure the search behemoths will be going back in forth with advancements quite a bit through the rest of this year.

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How to Build Your Search Marketing Agency for the Future

Digital marketing services are growing. As more companies enter the digital age and look to generate demand for their products and services online, the need for digital marketing services is growing exponentially.

Agencies are looking for new ways to leverage web 2.0 and offer additional services to their existing and new clients. A study published last week by Digital Marketing Depot and Optify sheds more light on how digital marketing agencies are thinking about the near future.

Here are seven things every agency should consider now to ensure future success.

1. Integrate Services

No more siloed, standalone services that later need to be incorporated and configured to “talk” to other marketing channels and services. Businesses today are looking for cross-channel, integrated solutions.

If you only offer one type of service (PPC, SEO, display), you’re missing out on potential revenue that will be taken by your competitors. Make sure you can offer all/any search marketing services and even venture into other digital marketing services, like social media advertising.

The study found that almost 72 percent of agency clients prefer a full service-approach and that 71 percent of marketers believe integration between earned, paid and owned media is important. However, the report also states that 79 percent of marketers still run their social campaigns in silos and that 2 out of 3 marketers say that integration of email marketing with other channels is either manual or non-existent.

If you’re looking for services to start adding and integrating, start with social (see #3: SOLoMo is a must). The study also found that the most popular service bundles include social media services (89 percent), followed by website services (86 percent) and design creative services (85 percent). Content (84 percent) and SEO (83 percent) are close behind.

Image Credit: Optify

2. Be Multi-Device Friendly

Consumers as well as B2B buyers are using on average 2.9 devices. Search marketing is no longer just on a desktop and Google recently made sure that mobile compatibility affects search rankings.

Your search marketing services have to account for these recent developments and must communicate the importance of multi-device compatibility and focus to your clients and prospects.

3. SoLoMo is a Must

If you have any doubt that the future of digital marketing (and search marketing especially) is in the trifecta of social, local and mobile, you are in the wrong profession. As a search marketing agency, every element of your services has to include something that supports at least one of these elements.

Social media is the number one requested service by agency clients (62 percent of agencies ranked it as #1) and fortunately enough, it is also the easiest to add, in some fashion, to your current offerings.

4. Have a Software Solution

As a search agency you won’t be able to keep showing up to client meetings armed with only Excel files and PowerPoint presentations. Software suites are the manifestation of digital marketing and to offer your services fully, you have to have one.

There are multiple marketing solutions that support agencies. They vary in price, features and sophistication as well as compatibility with the market you serve. Pick one (or a few) that fit your needs and wallet and make sure you use them during prospecting and sales engagements. It will add credibility to your services and allow you to charge more.

5. Use Both Your Left and Right Brain

Gone are the days of the creative director who only brainstorms ideas and sips whiskey on his thinking couch. Don Draper now needs to run the campaigns, have an analytical mind, and be able to prove how creative drives results.

But as creative agencies are required to adopt technical-analytical skills to serve their clients, search-marketing agencies are required to adopt creative skills as well. Ad copy and design, landing page creation and content marketing are becoming a crucial part of the search marketing agency tool set.

6. Exemplify the Future and Operate Like a Marketer

Your prospects come to you for help with digital marketing so you have to show them that you can deliver and lead by example. Have a website, manage a blog, be on top of the recent trends and news in your vertical and speak about these topics constantly.

Since digital marketing is still considered an innovation by the majority of the mass market (the late majority and laggards), you need to exemplify that innovation and look, sound and behave like an early adopter.

7. Make Content Marketing a Core Competency

I’m not going to say that “content is king” but I will say that if you don’t have a way to create content you have no business in search marketing. Content is more than just white papers and guides, it’s becoming the official digital currency (and no, I’m not referring to bitcoin), or at least the most common commodity.

Content is videos, infographics, presentations and podcasts. Content is landing pages, images, graphics and photos. It’s everything that can be shared, viewed and visited and it’s the core of every digital marketing campaign.

If you aren’t already offering content marketing services in conjunction with your search marketing, please do yourself a favor and start now.

Summary

What does this all mean? Clients don’t want a channel – they want results. As an agency, you better respond to client needs if you want to remain relevant in 2014 and beyond.

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Local Search Key Vendors, Best Practices & Steps to Success

With the rise of smartphones and mapping apps we’re living in the era of local search and discovery.

Before we dive into the thicket of what it takes to win in the space and who the players are, let’s take a step back and review the basics of local SEO.

Google’s Knowledge Graph – showing information directly on the search results page -and the presence of the ‘Carousel’ results are just two of the game changers making local SEO a moving target.

The carousel will make images and reviews a key driver of clicks. It may also imply that ranking number one in local results is less important as results are listed horizontally.

Before we dive into the thicket of what it takes to win in the space and who the players are, we will review the basics of local SEO.

The Key Drivers for Local Search

In general, SEOs agree the key factors driving local search results boil down to:

• Keyword-targeted, indexable landing pages (where the keyphrase is the location and the service)
• Consistent, accurate business listing data across multiple listing data providers
• Consistent, accurate name, address and phone number on the site landing page, business listings, and search engine local page
• Good reviews, content, and engagement on search engine local pages (Google+)
• Inbound links and citations / mentions for the target web page and the domain
• User searches for the business name in the geographical area
• Google Map Maker engagement (for Google, obviously)
• A good mobile experience (50 percent of mobile searches have local intent)

Given a basic understanding of the tactics and the user experience for local search, we can now review the various options for local search optimization.

Local SEO for the Truly Clueless

Say you are a lawyer, a plumber, or an exterminator and you don’t have time to worry about this stuff. Setting aside the fact that you likely aren’t reading this article, let’s look at the 100 percent outsourced options.

These vendors will set you up with a website, a local ad or marketing campaign, and some kind of local off-site page presence for a monthly fee, all you need to do is give them a call and a credit card number.

• ReachLocal: Pretty much the first players in this space and the industry leader. They tend to target the larger end of the small business market (more than a few employees and more than a few hundreds of dollars a month to spend). ReachLocal will set you up with a web presence and an online marketing (search, social, display, mobile) campaign that fits your budget.
• Yodle: Lesser known, but providing pretty much the same service as ReachLocal, Yodle targets the small end of the small business segment. They will set you up with a basic template-driven, search optimized website on a domain they own and control. They will also set up a paid search campaign assuming you have the budget, and will track and forward any calls they generate.

One thing to consider with these outsourced solutions is once you stop paying them, you may lose your website, the leads stop coming, and any SEO equity you may have established goes bye-bye.

If you really don’t think you can figure out how to create a website and do basic SEO, the outsourced approach is the solution for you. Just be aware of the downsides and the fact that you are paying them for the service. Otherwise, buck it up and make your own website and follow the instructions below to optimize it for local search.

The Do-It-Yourself Approach to Local SEO

So you are going to do it yourself. As we have seen above, you need good on-page SEO to rock in local search and a good mobile site or responsive design since a ton of your local searches will be on mobile devices.

Step 1: Basic SEO

You need to get your on-page SEO in order – create a nice, responsive site with a local keyword-targeted home page (e.g., “Childrens Resale Store, Brooklyn, NY”). Then go about the usual SEO tasks of getting good inbound links, citations, and mentions in the media.

With basic SEO out of the way, you now need to think about straightening out your business listings and optimizing your off-site local pages like Google+, Yahoo, Bing, Yelp, and many others.

Step 2: Business Listings

For a small business, you can manually create and update your business listings at several places. For example, you can get a Dun Bradstreet number, and update or create a listing with your name, address, and phone number at InfoUSA. These guys gradually feed many other local services like the Yellow Pages vendors with data.

Step 3: Off-site Local Pages

Now it’s time to get your off-site act together. With a few more basic steps like claiming your Google+, Bing, Yahoo, and Yelp pages and enriching your location on Google Map Maker you are on well on your local search way.

Go get some great reviews, upload photos, and make sure you’re your name, address and phone number (NAP) data is visible on your home or store page and exactly matches your listing data. Add semantic markup code to your NAP data to be 100% sure the engines get the message.

Large Enterprise Local SEO

The same basic rules apply for larger businesses with a big local footprint, but things get considerably more complex and time consuming. Welcome to the world of enterprise local search vendors. And, if you’re really busy, you may need a local search agency or specialist.

Enterprise Listings Management

Let’s take a look at some of the main local search vendors. If you work with an agency, they will most likely be using some combination of these in their service.

• Universal Business Listings: UBL directly feeds business databases like Acxiom, Dun Bradstreet, and InfoGroup (last time we checked). These are primary datafeed providers to multiple publishers. UBL also has a bulk claiming service for sites like Google+, allowing you to make a one-time claim and update of your data. UBL is not the company to work with to streamline management and updating of social / local sites, but they can get your basic business listings created or cleaned up so they can work their way through the local data ecosystem.
• Localeze: Recently acquired by Neustar, Localeze is similar to UBL in that it provides business listings data directly to a variety of publishers and primary data sources. In some ways Localeze is complementary to UBL as it provides data to a different set of distribution partners including Yahoo, Bing, Yellowpages.com, Facebook, Twitter, and TomTom. Localeze has created an impressive roster of sites it feeds with data.

There are other options as well, but for the sake of brevity, let’s move on to:

Enterprise Local Pages Management

Keeping third-party local sites like Google+, Yahoo Business Listings, and Yelp current and enriched with offers, campaign content, and offers is a big job, especially for brands with hundreds of locations. Previously, it was pretty much a manual job. Nowadays, there are several players who have stepped up and created APIs and interfaces that allow you to manage off-site local pages centrally.

Once you get into the space of managing multiple off-site pages for multiple locations you are going to be spending serious coin. If you have the budget, here are some folks to take a look at:

• Yext: While not exclusively aimed at large enterprise, the Yext team offers a range of services including the ability to centrally claim and enrich (with offers or other content) a large number of 3rd party sites. Yext charges a yearly fee for management with additional costs that vary with the amount of content you want to push to the managed sites. If you want to quickly push out a short-term offer to dozens of sites for hundreds of locations, and you have the budget, Yext may be for you. Recently, Yext and Yahoo announced Localworks – a service aimed at small businesses that gives them access to Yext and Yahoo listing and management services for $30 per month.
• Rio Local: Pretty much focused on larger companies with multiple locations, Rio has the only complete hosted local search solution. They 1) Host the local landing page and 2) Claim any number of off-site local pages (G+, yelp, etc) and 3) Create and verify the business listings. If you are OK with having them host your local on-site pages, Rio may be the option for you as they have the most control and due to ‘owning’ the landing page they can give pretty complete end to end reporting.

I am sure I missed a ton of vendors, so feel free to let me know what I left out in the comments.

Conclusion: Local Search Offers Great ROI

For a small business, local search may something that can be done in an afternoon, followed up by a quick daily or weekly review of off-site pages.

For a large business – say 1,000 locations – the costs and difficulty rapidly escalate. While it might seem crazy to spend $500,000 in vendor fees and $50,000 in agency management time to locally optimize your franchises, I would argue that it offers a great return. For some industries (e.g., finance) the ROI could truly be stellar.

Local search results are also less competitive than core web results. While you might not ever be able to rank for ‘Life Insurance’ your might very well be able to rank for ‘Life Insurance broker’ queries in Albany and every other city your do business in. Big brands, small brands, take note.

So if you haven’t already it’s time to add local search optimization to your marketing plan. But there’s no need to hurry – my small local business in Brooklyn would rather not have the competition.

Image Credit: Joe Loong/Flickr

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