Friday, April 29, 2016

SearchCap: Bing Ads updates, latest Windows 10 release & the Jelly relaunch

searchcap-header-v2-scap

Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web.

From Search Engine Land:

Recent Headlines From Marketing Land, Our Sister Site Dedicated To Internet Marketing:

Search News From Around The Web:

Link Building

Local & Maps

Searching

SEM / Paid Search

SEO

The post SearchCap: Bing Ads updates, latest Windows 10 release & the Jelly relaunch appeared first on Search Engine Land.

Maximizing your mobile impact

Whenever people talk about mobile search, one of the first things that always comes to mind is location, location, location. Since mobile phones are… well, mobile, these devices open up opportunities to target consumers who may otherwise have been hard to reach.

Proximity

According to a Consumer Barometer Survey, 82 percent of smartphone users utilize search engines to look for a local business. This is evidenced by the growing number of searches containing “near me,” as shown in the graph below. According to Google’s internal data, 88 percent of “near me” searches happen on a mobile phone.

Because of this, there’s an opportunity to leverage mobile phones to bring people in-store. Consider setting up campaigns with a hyper-targeted radius around brick-and-mortar locations and bidding up the mobile modifiers.

You can also use a lot of different lists to be more specific about exactly who you might want to bid on (e.g., email subscribers, previous purchasers) or just to bid higher on those people, even if still bidding on a broader group. (For more tips on bringing customers in store, check out this article.)

Moreover, mobile phones offer a unique opportunity to engage consumers in-store. According to a different study, “Consumers in the Micro-Moment,” by Google and Ipsos, once in store, 82 percent of smartphone users consult their phones while deciding what to buy. Keep that in mind as you build mobile content — ensure that the content is helpful and that in-store offers are present, in addition to online offers.

Micro-conversions

I am a big proponent of micro-conversions — and not just on mobile. The ultimate goal (the primary conversion point) should always be the priority, but if you can’t get that, get something. It is a common misconception that any on-page actions outside of the primary goal will detract from the overall conversion rate.

The primary conversion point should still be prioritized within the layout with a noticeable call to action. If a consumer isn’t ready to purchase, though, or if they would prefer not to complete the process on a phone, then it is good to have secondary give-and-take opportunities.

These opportunities should offer the consumer a chance to learn more about the product and be valuable enough to build interest in the advertiser’s brand while still giving the advertiser an opportunity to get something in return, such as an email address (even if without additional contact information).

If nothing else, getting the consumer into a remarketing list based upon the action that they took (like watching a video or signing up for an email newsletter) is better than nothing at all.

Facilitate conversions

This piece can’t be emphasized enough: Often, converting on a mobile phone is cumbersome. It is highly likely that dev work put toward facilitating mobile conversions will have a positive ROI — if the traffic is there.

One of the best tips that I’ve heard regarding landing page optimization is to watch one of the least savvy people you know try to convert. This is especially good advice on mobile, where people are notoriously less patient. Be mindful of the number of pages that need to load, where the calls to action are and how easy it is to use buttons and navigation without accidentally clicking nearby links or buttons.

Take special care with mobile forms. Optimizing mobile forms goes well beyond the placement on the page and the number of fields in use. Optimization also includes the logistics of filling out the form, such as which keypad (numbers vs. letters) appears for different fields and ensuring that the fields are easily visible when typing.

There is hardly anything more frustrating than attempting to fill out a form on a mobile phone while the keyboard covers the field, making it hard (or impossible) to see what you are typing. As part of a greater mobile guide, Google put together some great tips for making forms easier to use on mobile phones.

Understanding customer preferences

As you work to facilitate conversions, it is important to learn which conversions customers seem to prefer. Monitor how consumers use your site. Which actions are they performing most frequently? Do your primary conversion points have suffering conversion rates? If so, is this a typical part of the consideration phase, or is it a result of a misalignment between customer preferences and available options?

To be fair, business implications make it impossible to offer certain conversion types — or handle them well. If your company isn’t able to handle high call volumes, then it wouldn’t be a smart move to try to push people to the phone.

However, if your consumers seem to be much more willing to call instead of filling out the form, then it might be worthwhile to identify opportunities for your company to become better equipped at handling calls, potentially by partnering with an external resource or by setting up an IVR (interactive voice response system).

Sometimes, we get a little hung up on pushing customers down the path that is most convenient for the business without considering the potential ROI improvement that could come with making an internal shift to better align with customer preferences and expectations.

Tracking mobile consumers

According to a Google/IAB study titled Our Mobile Planet, 40 percent of consumers who do research on a smartphone will later go on to make a purchase on a desktop. Not only does this place an emphasis on showing up — being there to grab consumers as they enter the funnel — it also underscores the importance of tracking consumer engagements that happen elsewhere.

For illustration, Google shared the graph below, which comes from their own internal data (from 2015), which highlights the increase in conversions when cross-device attribution is in place.

Tracking indicators such as store locates, getting directions and reviewing business hours can provide some context around intent. Coupon downloads and redemptions can also be a great way to connect online and offline sales.

Tracking in-store visits through software and beacons is also a valuable option for retailers that drive a significant volume of traffic through stores. The topic of beacons warrants much more coverage than can be provided in this article, and in fact, there was a great SMX session about beacons. If you didn’t get a chance to attend, you can check out the recap here.

Last, but certainly not least, one of the best methods of tracking site visitors (mobile or not) is to get them into your CRM. As I mentioned in previous sections, if you can help to facilitate conversions in a manner that makes engagement convenient for the consumer, that’s the ideal situation.

Realistically, that might not always result in an immediate sale, but if you can capture information that will allow you to track that person via email address or another unique identifier, you can get a better understanding for how different touch points impact the bottom line.

The bottom line is that mobile advertisers need to be able to connect the dots and think outside the box as it applies to mobile’s role in the purchase path. Leaning too heavily on immediate sales isn’t always the best means of measurement.

Don’t forget the apps

Mobile provides a unique opportunity to connect with customers on a deeper level: through apps! There are many, many unique ways to leverage apps to help build brand loyalty and engage existing loyalists, such as providing useful content, promoting offers, storing logins, facilitating e-commerce and allowing consumers to access purchase history, wish lists and favorite items.

If your company has an app, take advantage of app-install ads and app extensions to get it in front of your customers. Moreover, understanding the value of your app as it pertains to customer loyalty and lifetime value will help you to establish and increase ROAS based upon installs.

The post Maximizing your mobile impact appeared first on Search Engine Land.

Callout and Review extensions now available in Bing Ads

bing callout and review extensions

Bing Ads rolled out callout and review extensions last week. The new ad extensions are available in all Bing Ads markets with the exceptions of Hong Kong and Taiwan. The ad shown above features both of these new extensions.

Callout Extensions

Advertisers can add up to 20 callouts in their campaigns and ad groups, and must have a minimum of two callout extensions for them to display.

One thing to note is that Bing says the format in which callouts show can vary. In the ad above there are actually two lines of callout extensions showing in this ad — one with dot separators (starts with “Free Cancellation”) and one with dash separators (starts with “The 20 best hotels in Chicago, IL”).

Review Extensions

Reviews for review extensions must come from “reliable, well-established and trusted sources”. The review must appear on the review landing page — and advertisers are not charged for clicks on those links. The reviews can be paraphrased, but must accurately represent the original review.

The ad above — with two lines of callouts and extended sitelinks — has a review extension enabled with a review from the World Travel Awards.

You can set up both of these from the ad extensions tab in the Bing Ads UI.

The post Callout and Review extensions now available in Bing Ads appeared first on Search Engine Land.

The #1 Reason Why Position #1 Doesn’t Matter

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That’s right — position #1, the elusive goal for so many SEOs, may not matter so much anymore. Crazy statement, right? Trust me… follow me for just a minute.

The screen shot below shows what Google refers to as a featured snippet, also known as a direct answer. (It’s also one I searched recently when baking, realizing I forgot to buy self-rising flour and hoping I wouldn’t have to go back to the store. Anyway, moving on… )

self-rising_flour_direct_answer

As you can see, the direct answer information is displaying above the initial search result. I don’t even have to click on the link to find the answer I need. I’m able to see that if I pull the baking powder and salt out of the cupboard, I can save myself a trip to the store.

While this is great for the end user, it means that MyRecipes.com provided me the information I needed, but I never visited their site. In many instances, however, the consumer is still going to visit the website because they need more information than what’s displayed in the direct answer.

So why does position #1 not matter as much? While the direct answer shown above does come from the #1-ranked website for the search query, it doesn’t always work this way. The direct answer is pulled from the site with the best answer, and Google doesn’t seem to care how it’s ranked.

In the example below, the featured snippet has been pulled from the #3-ranked result. (Not that I’ve ever searched this particular query in a sleep-deprived moment during the past year… )

when-will-baby-sleep-direct-answer

Can you imagine the difference in traffic for the #3 result with the direct answer vs. the #1 result without? Normally, the top organic ranking would have the highest click-through rate; however, the direct answer is likely taking traffic from the top result here (if not getting the majority of the clicks).

It’s important to optimize the content on all of your properties, not just your website. Yes, you really do need to include full content descriptions on your social profiles, because you never know what Google’s going to deem the best candidate for a direct answer.

In the example below, Google has chosen a featured snippet from a video on Pottery Barn’s YouTube channel for the search query, “how to hang drapes.” A page from Pottery Barn’s website that contains tips and how-tos for hanging drapes is #1 in the SERP — but because they’ve optimized their YouTube video description, it’s been selected as the direct answer. This benefits Pottery Barn in the long run, because now they have more real estate above the fold.

how-to-hang-drapes-direct-answer_1

The video is embedded in their website, along with additional supporting content on hanging drapes. Pottery Barn’s how-to guides provide a great information resource for customers, and that’s likely why Google’s rewarding them with both the featured snippet and the #1 position in the SERP.

how-to-hang-drapes-direct-answer

The featured snippet is pulled from the video description on YouTube:

pottery-barn-you-tube

So, what does all of this have to do with your SEO content strategy? When you provide useful information that’s easy to follow and understand, it could be used as a featured snippet in Google search results. If that happens, you will likely see a boost in traffic to your site — perhaps even more than the top organic result.

If you have optimized your site and your social channels, you can potentially gain a bigger portion of the SERP landscape through the featured snippet and position #1 ranking. However, even without #1, if you have the featured snippet, you are essentially the new #1.

Now that you understand the reward, you need to determine how to go after the direct answers. Start by searching Google for some of your target keywords (especially long-tail variations that take the form of a question) and find out if these queries trigger a featured snippet.

If these searches do produce direct answers, look at the sites that are obtaining them and evaluate what they’re doing differently. If you have the right information on your site to answer the query, double-check your setup. Do you have a dedicated page for each question with comprehensive, high-quality content? Or do you answer the question as part of a larger FAQ page? You may need to make some changes in order to win the featured snippet placement.

Direct answers are still relatively new, and they’re not on all queries. You may find that they’re starting to add them for queries related to your vertical, but the number of questions being answered is limited. Remember, even if a particular query doesn’t trigger a direct answer now, it may in the future — so you can always start creating content with that in mind.

Keep in mind that featured snippets are more commonly found on informational queries rather than transactional ones, so optimizing your content for direct answers will primarily be for the purpose of capturing searchers at the top of the funnel. In other words, plan your content accordingly; don’t try to use product pages to obtain featured snippets unless it’s appropriate to do so.

Position #1 isn’t as important as being the direct answer. Focus on creating great content that’s useful to your audience, and target the queries that would send someone to your site. While simple answers such as “what is a substitute for self-rising flour” may not drive tons of traffic, queries like “how to hang drapes” will likely drive traffic and quite possibly revenue in time.

The post The #1 Reason Why Position #1 Doesn’t Matter appeared first on Search Engine Land.

Why SEOs should not ignore Bing Webmaster Tools

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Before I make my case about using Bing Webmaster Tools, I want to preface the conversation with a couple of statements:

  • You should be optimizing your website based on Google’s guidelines and best practices, because they have the larger market share for search.
  • By no means am I advocating the use of Bing Webmaster Tools in lieu of Google Search Console. Rather, I’m suggesting the use of both, Google Search Console being the primary source and Bing Webmaster Tools the secondary.

With that out of the way, let’s talk about leveraging Bing Webmaster Tools. As an SEO Account Manager at Elite SEM, many times when onboarding new clients, we learn that they don’t have Bing Webmaster Tools set up. The majority of the time, it’s because the client is not aware of the tool or does not feel Bing is important.

So, you may thinking, why would I need to pay attention to Bing if Google has the majority of the market share? Here are some reasons.

Bing is still a major source of organic traffic

While Google may be your primary source of your organic traffic, Bing is almost certainly your second-highest source. Even if Bing accounts for only 20 percent to 30 percent of your monthly organic traffic, would you be willing to lose that traffic, which may be generating leads or revenue? My guess is probably not.

The image below shows an analytics breakdown from one of my clients for their Q1 2016 performance year over year. As you can see, Bing is the second-highest source of traffic and contributed to overall organic traffic growth year over year.

Bing Organic Search Traffic

Bing is expanding

Did you know that Bing powers Yahoo’s and AOL’s organic search results? The Yahoo partnership has been in effect since 2010, and the AOL partnership took effect in January 2016. So Bing’s reach is actually much larger than what is usually reported.

Here is comScore’s Desktop Search Engine Rankings from February 2016:

ComScores Search Engine Rankings

As you can see, Bing had 21.4 percent market share, but that number does not include the Yahoo or AOL numbers.

Even without Yahoo and AOL numbers, Bing’s market share has been increasing steadily year over year. It’s up from 19.8 percent in February 2015 and 18.4 percent in February 2014.

Bing Webmaster Tools offers unique data and tools

Bing Webmaster Tools provides additional site diagnostic reports and testing opportunities. Though the platform has many similar features and tools to Google Search Console, some features and tools can only be found in Bing. Either way, it’s helpful to use these tools to check your performance in Bing organic search and perhaps obtain data that Google has missed.

Some of the ways I leverage Bing Webmaster Tools are as follows:

1. Monitor site security

Both Bing Webmaster Tools and Google Search Console have a security monitoring feature. However, neither is 100 percent perfect, so it’s good to have two sources to review security issues such as a malware. Most recently, I wrote an article which highlights a malware warning from Google — the warning itself did not provide any details and was not particularly helpful, so this is an area where Bing data could be useful.

Bing Webmaster Tools Security Monitoring

2. Monitor crawl & indexation performance

Sometimes you may see crawl or indexation performance issues in Google Search Console. You can use Bing Webmaster Tools reports to get a larger picture of what may be causing the issues. It will also allow you to see if it’s a Google-specific issue or involves all search engines. Keep in mind Bing Webmaster Tools reports includes Yahoo data, as well.

Bing Webmaster Tools Crawl Indexation Reports

3. Keyword research & optimization recommendations

Bing has two new tools that are still in beta but can help provide keyword ideas and on-page SEO recommendations.

  1. Keyword Research Tool. This tool is very similar to the Google AdWords Keyword Planner tool. However, it provides organic keyword data versus paid data.
Bing Webmaster Tools Keyword Research
  1. SEO Analyzer Tool. This tool provides SEO feedback and recommendations for the web page that is entered. It also provides a rendering of the page source, which is similar to the Fetch tool in Google Search Console.
Bing Webmaster Tools SEO Analyzer Tool

There is also a Markup Validator tool that is in beta, which you can use to test structured data.

Conclusion

There are lots of new features and enhancements in Bing Webmaster Tools. I would highly recommend setting this up for your website.

By monitoring both Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools on an ongoing basis, you will have more data at your disposal and gain a more holistic view of your organic search performance.

The post Why SEOs should not ignore Bing Webmaster Tools appeared first on Search Engine Land.

Search in Pics: Kangaroos, Russo brothers & new napkins at Google

In this week’s Search In Pictures, here are the latest images culled from the web, showing what people eat at the search engine companies, how they play, who they meet, where they speak, what toys they have and more.

Kangaroo at Google this week:

Kangaroo at Google
Source: Google+

Russo brothers visit Google London:

Russo brothers visit Google London
Source: Google+

New napkins at Google London:

New napkins at Google London
Source: Twitter

European Google Shop:

European Google Shop
Source: Google+

Jon McLaughlin plays at Google:

Jon McLaughlin Plays At Google
Source: Google+

The post Search in Pics: Kangaroos, Russo brothers & new napkins at Google appeared first on Search Engine Land.

Thursday, April 28, 2016

Microsoft blocks Google Chrome & other browsers from Cortana in latest Windows 10 release

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Sorry, Google. You, Firefox, Opera and anyone else with a web browser that competes with Microsoft’s Edge will no longer be able to work within Microsoft’s Cortana digital assistant in Windows 10.

Microsoft buried the news today in a blog post about Cortana’s personalization of search results. It gave a few examples of how Cortana already integrates into Edge and Bing — nothing new, as far as I can tell, despite the blog post’s “Delivering Personalized Search Experiences in Windows 10 through Cortana” headline.

Instead, talking about Cortana personalization is really a set-up for the actual news, euphametically put under a sub-headline of “Protecting the Integrated Search Experience in Windows 10.”

In that section, Microsoft explains that apparently some software programs are somehow “circumventing the design” of Windows to redirect to other search engines “not designed” to work with Cortana. Here’s the key section:

Unfortunately, as Windows 10 has grown in adoption and usage, we have seen some software programs circumvent the design of Windows 10 and redirect you to search providers that were not designed to work with Cortana. The result is a compromised experience that is less reliable and predictable.

The continuity of these types of task completion scenarios is disrupted if Cortana can’t depend on Bing as the search provider and Microsoft Edge as the browser. The only way we can confidently deliver this personalized, end-to-end search experience is through the integration of Cortana, Microsoft Edge and Bing – all designed to do more for you.

Personally, I think Microsoft is taking some big liberties here. I installed Google’s Chrome browser as my default browser on one of my Windows 10 laptops. Google didn’t trick me into doing this. It was a deliberate choice on my part.

As a result, today if I do a search within Cortana, it gives me results that, if I click on them, jump me into Chrome. But shortly, I’ll be forced into Edge against my will, all because Microsoft has unilaterally decided that’s the best “experience” for me.

Even before this change, Microsoft was already getting around another choice I’d made: to have Google be my default search engine. That’s because with Windows 10, there’s no way to set a systemwide choice about your search provider. You can only use Bing.

Microsoft, in its post today, tries to suggest you have a systemwide choice over search providers, writing:

Of course, you can continue to use your search engine and browser of choice on Windows 10.  They can be accessed and used as you always have.  You can easily use our centralized default manager to choose your preferred default program for everything from browsing to email, and you can configure the search default setting in Microsoft Edge and Internet Explorer, which are available when you directly access those programs.

The bolding is Microsoft’s, because it even as it reduces user choices wants to given the impression that users actually have choice. This is pretty clear when you look at the screenshot Microsoft itself shared about its “centalized default manager,” as shown below:

Cortana-image-1

Quick. Do you see the setting for default search provider within that so-called centralized “Default apps” area of settings. No, you don’t. That’s because it doesn’t exist.

You can’t set a systemwide search provider setting. That means Cortana is locked to Bing. That now also means that Cortana will only launch Microsoft’s Edge, which by default uses Bing. If you want to change that, rather than use that “centralized” system, you instead have to:

  1. Open Settings in Edge
  2. Scroll down to Advanced settings and click to open those
  3. Scroll down to “Search in the address bar” and click “Change”
  4. Discover that Bing is likely the only option listed and, if so, click on the “Learn more” link
  5. After clicking on “Learn more,” a search is performed on Bing that tells you to go to the search engine you want within Edge, then repeat steps 1-3 above.
  6. In the case of doing this with Google, you can then finally change the search default in Edge.

Isn’t choice easy? That’s so much easier than with Chrome, where you go to Settings, select “Search” and then find Bing as one of the default choices offered.

After doing all that, you still won’t have that choice carry over to Cortana, thanks to today’s new Bing and Edge-only change.

The post Microsoft blocks Google Chrome & other browsers from Cortana in latest Windows 10 release appeared first on Search Engine Land.

With relaunch Jelly makes another run at Q&A-style “social search”

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With a pledge to bring “humanity” back to search, Jelly has relaunched. The Q&A app, or social-search engine if you prefer, originally launched in 2014 and met with limited adoption. Following a refresh and work under the hood, the site/app has returned and is being reintroduced.

The simple idea that resides at the heart of Jelly, as well as many similar efforts that came before, is the notion that people can do a better job of answering questions than a search engine. Despite the logic and coherence of this thesis, nobody has yet pulled it off. That includes a long list of companies and startups, including: Yahoo Answers, Answers.com, Askville (Amazon), ChaCha, Facebook Questions, Keen, Rewarder, Quora and Vark (bought by Google).

Jelly

Jelly founder (and Twitter co-founder) Biz Stone sees Jelly as the marriage of technology and human altruism. He also believes that Jelly can be more efficient than search:

The average person likely has several if not a dozen or more ordinary questions every day. Think about the time you spend “searching” each day. Those minutes easily turn into hours. Jelly gives you your time back. Enter your question, then return to your life. In its early phase, it may take minutes for Jelly to get you an answer, but Jelly is doing the work.

Like Vark before it, Jelly is using a “routing algorithm” to determine who receives questions. This is intended to match queries with Jelly members best suited to answering them. When you join (not required) you identify areas of expertise and interest. In addition, I also imagine location, historical response times and a number of other factors are considered as well.

It’s somewhat surprising to me that, despite years of trying, nobody has really developed one of these “help engines” or “question engines” that can go toe to toe with search. But one of the fundamental challenges is scale. You’ve got to have lots of users and responders on the system to create a great experience and reward behavior.

AI and chat bots might help address this basic challenge with curated content and archived answers, where they exist. And Stone says that Jelly is using some AI, but the notion of chat bots is in conflict with the idea of making search more “human.”

The post With relaunch Jelly makes another run at Q&A-style “social search” appeared first on Search Engine Land.

SearchCap: Google Maps controls, shopping ads & more

searchcap-header-v2-scap

Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web.

From Search Engine Land:

Recent Headlines From Marketing Land, Our Sister Site Dedicated To Internet Marketing:

Search News From Around The Web:

Industry

Local & Maps

Searching

SEO

SEM / Paid Search

Search Marketing

The post SearchCap: Google Maps controls, shopping ads & more appeared first on Search Engine Land.

How to help your sales team close more paid search leads

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For many companies, the goal of their paid search campaigns is to generate leads. As marketers, we work hard to get qualified leads to our sales team for the lowest cost possible.

But the problem is, a successful paid search campaign doesn’t just produce cheap leads — it produces economical sales.

The trouble with sales

Recently, I was approached by a client who had decided that paid search simply didn’t work for their business. They had made enough money off of their paid search leads to cover their ad spend, but they weren’t really making any profit.

To be honest, this conclusion came as a surprise.

We had worked in this industry before and knew we were killing it for them. Their paid search campaigns were — by every metric we had available — performing admirably well. In fact, we were driving hundreds of high-intent leads to their sales team.

Based on our previous experience in this industry, we knew that approximately ten percent of those leads should have been turning into sales.

However, this client was only closing one percent of their leads.

shocked-look

No wonder paid search wasn’t making sense for their business!

Baffled, I started asking questions. Were the leads a bad fit for their business? Were we bidding on the wrong keywords? Was there something wrong with our advertising approach?

The answer was both frank and insightful:

“Jake, the problem isn’t the leads. The leads are great. My sales team just doesn’t know how to close these leads.”

It was a problem I’d seen many times before. Without the right sales processes in place, even the best paid search marketing will never produce a profit.

Why sales teams struggle (and how to fix it)

Paid search is a great way to get high-intent, highly qualified leads in the door. But paid search leads are different from many other kinds of leads.

What makes paid search leads different?

As marketers, we understand the psychology of paid search.

Paid search leads start by searching for something specific online. As part of that search, they find an ad and think, “This looks like what I want.” They click the ad, check out the landing page and decide, “Yes, I’m interested.” From there, they fill out a form or call in for more information.

Simple, right?

As straightforward as this process is, it’s important to note that these leads are actively looking for solutions. They reached out because they have a problem they want to solve now.

i-want-it-now

This is very different from other lead generation approaches like cold calling, TV advertisements, or even social media ads. In each of these cases, the lead is reacting to your content.

In paid search advertising, your leads are initiating contact with your content. In other words, they are seeking you out. That makes them incredibly qualified leads… but it also means you probably aren’t the only solution they are considering.

How to handle paid search leads

With the psychology of paid search advertising in mind, here are five things your sales team needs to know about their paid search leads.

1. Response times matter

Remember, paid search leads are actively searching. That means they are probably looking at your competitors, too.

According to InsideSales.com, 50 percent of buyers choose the vendor that responds first. Since paid search leads are looking for and at your competitors, you are in a race against the clock to be the first to respond.

Plus, new leads are 100x more likely to respond if contacted within five minutes (vs. after 30 minutes), so every passing second increases the chance that your lead will find a more interesting competitor or get distracted by another page.

They are on the internet, after all.

Wherever possible, your sales team should be responding to paid search leads in less than five minutes. Inbound calls from prospects should never go to voicemail or wait on hold for a prolonged period. Your hot paid search leads are simply too expensive to waste.

2. Keep calling

Typically, if you want a 90-percent contact rate, your sales team needs to shoot for a minimum of eight to 12 contact attempts over a ten- to 14-day period. Just to contact 50 percent of your leads, your sales reps will need to average at least six contact attempts.

The problem is, most sales reps attempt to contact leads 1.3 to 2.1 times before giving up. As a result, only about one one in every four internet leads are actually contacted.

Paid search leads typically cost tens, hundreds or thousands of dollars apiece — can your company afford to pay four times that amount per contacted lead?

Plus, these lead are expensive because they are so hot. That means they may be your easiest-to-close leads.

Therefore, it’s in your sales team’s (and your company’s) best interest to make at least eight to 12 contact attempts before giving up.

3. Stop cherry-picking leads

Because paid search provides a steady stream of leads, sales reps sometimes start cherry-picking leads. After all, there are always more leads, right?

The problem is, those wasted leads are expensive.

Often, I’ve seen ambitious sales people take two to three times as many leads as their teammates and simply focus on the leads that are easiest to close.

As a result, they make a lot of sales, but their sale-to-lead ratio is so low that the company actually ends up paying more for wasted leads than they make on the rep’s closed sales.

To address or avoid this problem, it’s a good idea to keep your sales team hungry. If your sales team isn’t asking for more leads, they probably have too many… which leads to cherry-picking.

4. Messaging alignment

Most paid search leads convert because they think your company can solve a very specific problem for them. When your sales team contacts them, they are expecting to have that problem addressed.

If sales tries instead to sell them something different from what your marketing promised, they’ll feel betrayed and lose interest.

On the other hand, if the sales message matches the marketing message, that will confirm to the lead that reaching out was the right move.

So, to make sure that your sales team is meeting the expectations of your paid search leads, the sales team needs to be dialed into the messaging of your paid search ads.

Communicating your paid search strategy to your sales team will take some extra work on your part, but it will make your sales team more effective… which makes your paid search campaigns more profitable.

Plus, the more you communicate with your sales team, the easier it will be to target your messaging to your ideal audience. Your sales team knows which kinds of leads are the best fit for your business, so they can give you the information you need to improve your marketing.

Personally, I’ve seen this sort of marketing-sales crosstalk produce millions in additional revenue from paid search. So, if you aren’t talking to your sales team on a regular basis, your campaigns are probably underperforming.

5. Get them off the market!

Finally, paid search leads are often in a “ready-to-buy” mode. As a result, if you don’t take them off the market, someone else will.

This is particularly important for companies with more expensive products or services. If you aren’t aggressively pursuing your paid search leads, they will often look at your competition and decide to try out a lower-cost option instead, even if that isn’t the best solution for them.

The more quickly you can get to your paid search leads and convince them that they’ve found the right solution, the sooner you will get them off of the market and away from the competition.

Conclusion

Without a sales team that understands how to handle paid search leads, most companies struggle to turn conversions into sales. As a result, they often find it hard to make money off of paid search.

As digital marketers, it’s important to understand why sales teams may have a hard time closing paid search leads and equip them with the skills and knowledge they need to turn those expensive leads into profitable sales.

Overall, creating this sort of marketing-sales alignment will produce fantastic results and allow your company to finally capitalize on the potential of your paid search campaigns.

The post How to help your sales team close more paid search leads appeared first on Search Engine Land.

Get your mobile apps in shape with these 7 engagement practices

Getting engagement right or realizing the potential of the mobile channel isn’t always simple or easy. What can you do to get your mobile apps in great engagement shape?

Download this white paper from Insert to learn how to use engagement features to drive interaction with your app and impact your business results.

Visit Digital Marketing Depot to get your copy.

The post Get your mobile apps in shape with these 7 engagement practices appeared first on Search Engine Land.

Google Maps now with keyboard based navigation controls

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Google Maps has added keyboard based navigation controls to the desktop version of Google Maps. So now you can use your keyboard to pan and zoom within Google Maps, without touching your mouse. You can also use your keyboard to find and learn more about specific places like neighborhoods, transit stations and shops and restaurants.

Google documented how this works on Google+:

  • On your keyboard, press Tab to focus the map. An area of the map will be highlighted with a square.
  • Below the square, there will be a numbered list of places in that area.
  • To move around the map, use the arrow keys. To move the map by one square, hold down Shift while using the arrow keys.
  • To zoom in or out of the map, press + or –
  • To learn more about a place, press the number associated with the place. 

Here is a screen shot of it in action:

Keyboard accessible Google Maps

The post Google Maps now with keyboard based navigation controls appeared first on Search Engine Land.

Google Shopping ads so hot right now: the meteoric rise of PLAs

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Google Product Listing Ads have been around quite a while, having rolled out to all US advertisers in 2011.

Since then, we’ve seen incredible growth of the format, which accounted for 43 percent of all retailers’ Google search ad clicks and 70 percent of non-brand clicks in Q1, according to my company’s latest Q1 Digital Marketing Report (registration required).

rkg-q1-2016-paid-search-google-pla-click-share

The vast majority of advertisers spend most of their time optimizing for non-brand search, since brand searches are typically navigational in nature for non-manufacturers and are mostly the product of other marketing efforts that drive brand awareness and demand.

As such, the game has changed for e-commerce advertisers, from one in which optimizing keyword lists, along with the ad copy and bids tied to them, came first and foremost, to one in which even managing keywords perfectly may only get an advertiser 30 percent of the non-brand pie.

The feed-driven ad model is here to stay, and many advertisers must shift focus away from text ads to optimize for those ad units driving the most growth.

Let’s take a look at some of the recent drivers of PLA traffic growth for advertisers, and wrap up with some of the key areas of account management that e-commerce advertisers must focus on given the growing importance of Google Shopping.

Mobile, mobile, mobile, mobile and mobile

There have been far too many “Year of Mobile” declarations, but when it comes to Product Listing Ads, this just might be it.

PLA phone spend and clicks grew incredibly in Q1, up 193 percent and 162 percent, respectively. PLA growth on desktop and tablet devices is solid, but it looks paltry in comparison.

rkg-q1-2016-paid-search-google-pla-growth-by-device

There are a few factors helping to drive up PLA growth on mobile devices.

The first is the natural rise of mobile internet usage in general. More Americans own smartphones now than ever before, and that trend is only going to continue.

As long as mobile users are turning to the web for their search needs, Google ad traffic is going to grow on these devices, as Google is the default search engine for the vast majority of smartphone browsers in the US market.

Another, less organic accelerator of PLA growth recently is the significant increase in the size of PLA units on phones.

In July 2015, Google announced expandable Shopping Ads on phones, which would appear at the same size as prior to the update when first rendered on the SERP, but which would expand once a user interacted with the carousel.

However, just two months later, Google scrapped the expandable units and instead simply doubled the size of how the PLA unit appeared at all times. This resulted in PLA units dominating the above-the-fold real estate for many phone searches.

pla_format_getting_larger

This increased real estate certainly helped PLAs to garner more clicks.

But Google didn’t just stop at upgrading the size of these ad units – it also appears they increased the frequency with which they appear on phone SERPs.

Beginning in July 2015, PLA impressions on Google.com began to grow significantly for phones.

google_pla_device_impression_growth

During the busy holiday shopping season in November and December, PLA impressions naturally increased across all device types with increased search volume, but phones saw the most dramatic rise.

Looking at the first three months of 2016, PLA impressions are actually higher than even the busiest stretch of the holiday shopping season for phones. In March, PLA impressions on phones were up 174 percent year over year for the median advertiser.

All in all, it looks like Google has rapidly expanded the volume of searches that trigger PLAs on phones, and this in turn has paid massive dividends in terms of click and spend growth on the format.

Aside from showing bigger PLAs more often on its own SERP, Google has also recently begun using another tool in its arsenal to expand the reach of PLAs: search partners.

Search partners starting to account for a meaningful share of PLA traffic

Search partners have long accounted for only a tiny sliver of PLA traffic. But beginning in August of 2015, that share began to rise.

rkg-q1-2016-paid-search-google-pla-partner-share-by-device

Driving this increase were two major changes:

  • Google began showing PLAs in image searches, with this traffic classified as coming from search partners.
  • Retailers such as Kohl’s and Target started to increasingly show PLAs on their sites.

While search partner traffic share has since come down from the highs observed in December, it’s been back on the rise over the past couple of months for all three device types.

As I talked about in this column, search partner PLA traffic performs at an almost identical cost per order as Google.com traffic for phones and tablets — the device types with the highest share of PLA traffic coming from partners. Thus, partner traffic has given many advertisers an efficient way of expanding their PLA programs.

So, what can advertisers do?

The conclusion here is that as far as e-commerce paid search optimization goes, Product Listing Ads need to be a priority — perhaps the priority.

That means:

  • optimizing product feeds to meet and exceed all of Google’s requirements.
  • keeping feeds up-to-date in terms of product selection, availability and pricing.
  • structuring Shopping campaigns intelligently to bid products and manage negatives effectively.
  • using negatives and campaign priorities to segment campaign traffic by query type, such as forcing all brand traffic to a single campaign to bid this traffic differently from non-brand traffic.
  • using a smart bidding platform capable of bidding products and devices to efficiency targets.
  • timely management of any feed errors or other advertising violations; a disapproved text ad/keyword might shut down some text ad spend, a disapproved feed will shut down your entire PLA program.
  • Consistent search term report monitoring to inform negative keyword additions and guide structural campaign changes to help funnel queries to the most appropriate product groups with the most appropriate bids.

Failing to make PLAs a priority means failing to take advantage of the single biggest vehicle of paid search growth for e-commerce brands.

Keyword management is still important, but PLAs are the new black.

The post Google Shopping ads so hot right now: the meteoric rise of PLAs appeared first on Search Engine Land.

Is your brand prepared for voice search? 3 steps to get the conversation started

Whether you work in SEO or PPC, you’ve likely noticed a new trend emerging in your search reports: a rise in longer-tail searches and question-based search phrases. The likely culprit? Voice input.

Voice search is easier than text input; we all know this. We can speak something much more naturally than we can type it. Most of us are looking for a fast fix or a way to make multi-tasking more efficient, and conversational user interfaces fit that bill perfectly.

Whether we want to ask Alexa to clarify a recipe while cooking, ask Siri for directions while driving or run quick searches during the commercial breaks when second-screening, we’re all getting increasingly comfortable using voice search and digital personal assistants.

Take a look at the rapid adoption rates that Search Engine Land reported on back in December:

Search Engine Land Study

The vast majority of folks reported adopting conversational search just within the last several months, showing how dramatically it is growing.

Why does this matter?

There’s an obstacle that brands face when adjusting to voice input for search. The obstacle is that we will turn this easy input into a complicated problem because we haven’t adjusted for it.

Here are three simple steps you can take today to prepare.

1. Rethink how you’re showing up for branded searches

Do you follow the comedian John Oliver? I love how good he is at skewering companies or people who are doing things they shouldn’t. Recently, he did a report on the problem of mistaken identity in credit reporting with the three big credit reporting companies.

John Oliver’s investigation revealed that as many as 10 million people in the United States have major errors on their credit reports as a result of mistaken identity, but the major credit reporting companies (Equifax, Experian and TransUnion) have no system in place for fixing these errors which cause a lot of havoc in people’s lives.

Here’s what he did:

Equifacks

He suggested his viewers visit parody sites his team created at equifacks.com, experianne.com and tramsonion.com. Because, as he said, “It would clearly be a horrible thing if these actual companies were mistaken for these fake companies. But don’t worry – 95 percent of the time, that won’t happen. And apparently that’s good enough, right?”

While this is a hilarious parody, we do need to take into account variations in pronunciation when it comes to voice search, since the margin of error here can be quite vast.

I could search for these brand names and still come across the parody sites, like here:

TramsOnion_Screenshot

As you can see, this is not ideal for the credit company’s brand.

I’m going to walk you through a true example, and this is your cautionary tale.

I did a voice search on Cortana on my desktop for Bobbi Brown makeup. I noticed that Cortana spelled “Bobbi Brown” differently from the brand name:

BobbyBrown

Here’s what the SERPs looked like:

Bbrown_SERPs

Great job on the shopping ads here, and the organic results were on point, too. In this case, misspellings had been accounted for within the search strategy.

But what about brands that are not in English?

Let’s take Yves Saint Laurent as an example. I searched for “show me Yves Saint Laurent bags” using both Siri and Cortana:

Siri_YSL CortanaYSL

Cortana did much better here than Siri did, but the variability in pronunciation means that we can’t count on voice search getting it right every time — at least not for a while.

Advertisers need to anticipate these issues and commit some time to resolving the voice search picture for their brands.

What can you do?

  • Research misspellings that can result from common mispronunciations of brand name, product name or key search terms.
  • Add them as a test to your keyword optimization strategy, though be careful to add in relevant negative keywords, as well.

2. Adjust for natural language

Natural language shows intent more strongly.

When you type a search, you use computer language — “Bahamas vacation deals,” for example. When you speak a search, you use your own language: “What are some Bahamas vacation deals for June?” or “How much does it cost to fly to the Bahamas?”

The advantage of this is the degree of specificity. That’s also where brands can stumble.

If your listing in the SERPs for one of these specific queries is a generic page, chances are you’ll lose the click. To boost your chances of winning, make sure you offer search results that can answer the query most closely.

For example, here are three of the ads that showed up for a conversational search for “What are some Bahamas vacation deals for June?” Which one would you have clicked on?

Atlantis

The third ad mentioning the “summer sale” has a very high level of relevancy, and it is the only one that factored in the specific timeline mentioned by the searcher. That’s the one I would have picked!

What can you do?

  • Optimize your landing pages and ad copy to account for high-value natural language searches.
  • Since broad match may not always account for natural language queries, consider adding these high-value natural language queries as keywords within your PPC campaigns.
  • Select keywords based on the degree of intent the searches reveal. For example, I may not want to bid on “Who lives in the Bahamas?”
  • Adjust bids based on degree of intent. For example, I would want to ensure I raised my bids for relevant queries such as “What are the best vacation packages for the Bahamas?”

3. Adapt for top of funnel

Of course, you’re showing up for branded searches or transactional searches directly asking for your product. But what about being helpful to your customers by answering their questions with information you have to share?

As you know, content marketing helps brands build loyalty. When it comes to conversational search, it also helps you show up for long-tail queries, which is another aspect of voice search that is becoming more critical.

Since voice search queries have been shown to frequently contain question words, marketers could benefit from informational creative that addresses top-of-funnel queries, as well.

While they may not immediately be transactional, this content could help build your brand’s goodwill and engagement levels.

For example:

Whitenteeth

What can you do?

  • Research a list of FAQs relevant to your products, and try optimizing those pages for the natural language query version of the questions.
  • Monitor additional KPIs, such as assisted conversions for PPC, as well as micro-conversions, such as form fills or content interaction.

In summary

Think of the last few searches you did using voice. How often are you using it? This is a great time to get a jump on voice search and voice inputs, as we all try to figure it out together as an industry.

The early adopter gets the advantage, so why not get the conversation started at your company?

The post Is your brand prepared for voice search? 3 steps to get the conversation started appeared first on Search Engine Land.

Hertha Marks Ayrton Google Doodle marks 162nd birthday of “The Electric Arc” author

Wednesday, April 27, 2016

SearchCap: Google merchant feed, Getty Images EU complaint & more

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Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web.

From Search Engine Land:

Recent Headlines From Marketing Land, Our Sister Site Dedicated To Internet Marketing:

Search News From Around The Web:

Industry

Local & Maps

Link Building

Searching

SEO

SEM / Paid Search

The post SearchCap: Google merchant feed, Getty Images EU complaint & more appeared first on Search Engine Land.

Google adds Merchant Center Feed Rules to make formatting shopping feeds easier

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Let’s face it, shopping feeds are a pain. Such a pain that an entire cottage industry has sprung up to help retailers with the nuisance of product feed formatting and management. On Tuesday, Google released Feed Rules to make it a little easier for those advertisers and retailers managing Google Shopping feeds on their own to get feed data formatted correctly.

“You can export and submit your product data in your own format, and use different rules to transform it into product attributes and values that follow the Google Shopping feed specification, directly in Merchant Center,” Sven Herschel, product manager for Google Shopping, explained in a blog post.

From the new Feed rules tab in Merchant Center, you can now set rules to change column headers and values used in your product data to match those used by Google — e.g., “for women” to “female” as shown in the screenshot from Google below.google shopping feed rules

Additionally, you can add missing attributes by setting rules that can automatically populate missing fields with a fixed value or different values based on certain conditions.

Once you’ve got your data all set, then you can use Feed Rules to apply custom labels to products and tag products with shipping labels.

Herschel adds that this is just version 1 of Feed Rules, and Google will be looking for feedback on the feature and suggestions for additional capabilities. Select “Send Feedback” on the gear icon in Merchant Center to send Google your thoughts.

The post Google adds Merchant Center Feed Rules to make formatting shopping feeds easier appeared first on Search Engine Land.