Google AdWords - PPC : 25 Glossary Terms You Need to Know

Here’s a short dictionary of 25 Google AdWords terms you need to know, to get you started and increase your conversion rates with your paid campaigns.

1. Campaign - An ad campaign on Google AdWords is made up of your ad groups, and has the same budget, campaign type and your other ad settings. It’s generally what you first set-up when you advertise, and it helps you organize your different paid advertising efforts. You can run multiple campaigns at any time from your Google account.

2. Ad groups - An ad group is your set of keywords, budgets and targeting methods for a particular objective, within the same campaign. For example, if you are running an ad campaign for a shoe sale, you could set up ad groups to target for online sales, women’s shoes and men’s shoes. You can have multiple ads in each ad group.

3. Campaign Type - Your campaign type is where you want your ads to be seen. Google has:

• “Search Network only” (which means Google search only)
• “Display Network only” (which means your ad shows up in Google’s Display network of websites, videos, YouTube, Blogger and more. This is also known as AdSense)
• “Search Network with Display Select” (which is a combo of search and display)

If you have a Google Merchant Center account and want to use Product Listing Ads, you can also choose “Shopping” as a campaign type.

4. Keywords - Keywords are very important in your Google Ads. They are the words or word phrases you choose for your ads, and will help to determine where and when your ad will appear. When choosing your keywords, think like your customer and what they would be searching for when they want your product, service or offer. Though you can include as many as you like, I suggest a maximum of twenty keywords.

Here’s Google’s explanation on how to build the best keyword list:

5. Quality Score - A quality score is the measurement from Google based on the relevancy of your ad headline, description, keywords and destination URL to your potential customer seeing your ad. A higher Quality Score can get you better ad placement and lower costs.

6. Impressions - An impression is the measurement of how many times your ad is shown.

7. Ad Rank - Your Ad Rank is the value that’s used to determine where your ad shows up on a page. It’s based on your Quality Score and your bid amount.

8. Mobile ad - Mobile ads are what your mobile searchers see on their devices. Google AdWords has WAP mobile ads and “ads for high-end mobile devices”.

9. Ad extensions - Ad extensions are extra information about your business, such as your local address, phone number, and even coupons or additional websites. They’re what shows up in blue below your ad descriptions.

General Ad Related Terms

10. Call to Action (CTA) - A CTA is literally the action you want your searcher to take. Good CTAs in your ads are short, action oriented words such as “Buy”, “Get”, “Act Now”, etc.

11. Click Through Rate (CTR) - Your CTR is an important metric in your account settings. It measures how many people who have seen your ad click through to your link destination.

12. Landing Page - Your landing page is the page on your website to which you’re driving traffic from your ad.

13. Optimization - Optimization in Google AdWords is like optimization elsewhere in marketing. It means making the changes in your ad that get you higher results for your objectives.

14. Split Testing - Split testing includes A/B and multivariate testing. It’s a method of controlled marketing experiments with the goal being to improve your objective results (such as higher CTR’s, increased conversion or even better Ad Ranking).

Cost Related Terms

15. Bid Strategy - Your bid strategy is basically how you set your bid type to pay for viewer interaction with your ads.

16. Daily budget - Your daily budget is what you’re willing to spend per day per ad.  Your daily cost is based on a daily average per month, so don’t be alarmed if yours varies from day to day.

17. CPC - Cost-Per-Click is the most common bid type on Google AdWords. It means you pay every time a person actually clicks on your ad. You set your “maximum CPC” in the bidding process, which means that dollar amount is the most you’ll pay for a click on your ad.

18. PPC - Pay-Per-Click is the same as CPC.

19. CPM - Cost-Per-thousand impressions is a bidding method that bases your costs on how many times your ads are shown (impressions).

20. Billing Threshold - Your billing threshold is the level of spending that triggers a charge to you for the ad costs. It applies to automatic payments, and the threshold level starts at $50. It you reach that within 30 days, you’ll be billed, and your threshold then raises to $100 and so on.

Learn more about Google AdWords billing.

Ad Creative Terms

21. Headline - Your ad headline is the header of your ad copy.  It generally shows up in blue when your ad is live.

22. Destination URL - Your destination URL is the landing page your ad is directed to when it’s clicked. Your destination site can be a specific page. You can change it for differing ads within ad groups. Your audience does not see it in the ad.

23. Display URL - Your display URL is what shows up in your ad copy. You can keep this simple and clean to increase your brand recognition, trust, and conversions.

24. Side ad - A side ad is the ad that show up on the right hand side of a search engine results page (SERP).

25. Top ad - A top ad is the ad that shows up in a shaded box above the organic search results. Note: Your ad will likely show up as both a side ad and a top ad - so write your ad copy to optimize for both.

Top 10 SEO Tips For Blogger and Beginners

Simply terms SEO or Search Engine Optimization is a process by which you make your web pages more search engine friendly in order to maximize relevant search engine traffic. SEO is divided into 2 main parts i.e.  on-page SEO  and off page SEO which is further sub divided into parts or techniques like keyword analysis, directory submission, social book marking, blog writing, article submission etc.

1.Do Keyword Research

Keyword Research is one of the most important activity of SEO. Keyword research is important because both the search engine and users depend upon keyword for finding your website. Choose the right keyword for your brand and website. There are many tools and software such as Google Adwords Keyword Tool, Market Samurai, Long Tail Pro etc which you can use for finding profitable keywords for your website.

2.Keyword Density

Do use keywords in your post but use them naturally, like the way you would talk. Keyword density must be between 2-4%. This means that if you are writing 800 words article then your keywords should not be repeated more than 3-4 times in each 100 words block. If your keyword density is more than 5% then Google will penalize you. Remember you are writing articles for your readers not for search engines.So Avoid Over Stuffing of keywords.

3. Optimize Page Titles & Meta Description

Every page on your website should have a unique title tag and it should be less than 70 characters.Similarly Meta description of your post should be between 150-160 characters. This is important because search engines reads meta description for understanding the content in a post. If you are using WordPress CMS then you can use Yoast SEO Plugin which will help you in On Page SEO Optimization.

4. Say No To Duplicate Content

Nowadays a large number of bloggers are scrapping articles from other websites and are posting on their blog just for the sake of getting traffic. Most of the beginners are not even giving credit to the original author. But they don’t know that by posting Duplicate content on their website they are violating Google & other search engines Guidelines . Duplicate content affects brand creditably, creates negative user experience and affects search engine rankings and domain authority. So if you want to get good traffic from Search engines then only publish unique content on your website and say no to duplicate content.

5.Create XML Sitemap

A sitemap is a map of all the URLs in your entire website, listed in hierarchical order.  Do create a sitemap. By creating XML Sitemap of your blog you are helping search engines to better index your blog. If you are using WordPress then you can use Google XML Sitemap for creating your Sitemap.

6. Do Not Use Broken Links

Do check your website for broken or dead links. If there are many broken links on your website then it is bad for SEO as well as for your website because it will hurt both the search engines as well as your readers. Search engines will not be able to index your site if they cannot get through your links and your readers will not be able to find content on your website. If you are using WordPress then you can use Broken Link Checker Plugin which will check your websites for broken links.

7. Increase Backlinks

Backlinks are one of the most important factor which affects the ranking of any site in search engines. Higher the number of quality backlinks higher the credibility of your blog. So if you want to achieve higher search engine rankings and traffic to your website then you will have to invest your time in increasing your website backlinks. You can easily increase backlinks by doing article submission, blog commenting, guest posting, directory submission and social media promotion.

8. Image Optimization

Image optimization is one of the most important factor of On Page SEO. A Picture is worth than 1000 words. Therefore if you want to get traffic from Google Images then you must optimize your images by using your keywords in ALT Tag. Make the size of the file as small as possible without losing quality. Also give description and caption to your images.

9.Use Google Webmaster And Google Analytics

Every webmaster must use Google Webmaster Tools And Google Analytics as it helps in improving site and its performance in the search engines. You can use Google Webmaster Tools for removing bad links, fixing 404s errors on your website, for submitting sitemaps and for creating sitelinks.You can also check which others sites are linking to yours and what keywords your site is ranking for. Analytics: Google Analytics can be used for finding how many visitors your site gets, which keywords were used by visitors in the search engines to get to your website and what pages they visit. You can also see the traffic sources and average time of readers on your website.

10. Create Robots.TXT

Robots.txt is a file which is placed at the root directory of a web site.It helps in indexing and gives instructions to search engines which pages it can see and which pages it cannot see. For example if you specify in your Robots.txt file that you do not want the search egnines to access your thank you page ,than that page wont be show up in search results and web users wont be able to find it. You can go to your website and check whether you have a robots.txt file or not by adding /robots.txt immediately after your domain name.

Example: https://www.newupdate.co/robots.txt

Bonus SEO Tip: Website Speed.

Do you know that website speed affects SEO. According to Google the faster your website loads, the higher it will rank when compared to similar sites with a longer loading time. For speeding your blog you can use CDN Networks such as CloudFlare,or MaxCDN. You must install caching plugin such as W3 Total Cache in your blog . If images in your website are optimized then your website will load faster. You can use GTmetrix for checking your website speed.

Source:- newupdate.co

Google Algorithm Updates - 2003 to 2015 [Infographic]

Having trouble staying up with Google's algorithm updates? Not sure if you're dealing with Pandas or Penguins - or even Hummingbirds, for that matter? No idea what I'm talking about?

If this is you, the team an OnCrawl have put together an infographic which details every major Google algorithm update from the past 12 years. If you're wondering why your search traffic dropped off at some point, cross-reference against this listing to see if maybe you've copped a Google penalty in amongst the various updates and changes. SEO Tutorial

For more info visit:- Social Media Today

Introduction to Search Marketing

When you enter a keyword into any search engine, you instantly get results (webpages) that are closely related to or match your search query.

Search marketing is divided into two disciplines, Search Engine Marketing (SEM) and Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Search marketing is inbound marketing on steroids and is one of the most effective marketing methods in the digital marketing era.

First, what is SEO?

What is SEO?

SEO or Search Engine Optimization is the process of affecting a website’s visibility on the search engine results pages (SRPs) for a target set of keywords/keyphrases.

The higher the position of a webpage on the organic search results pages, the more “visible” the page will be.

How do search engines work?

Algorithms

Search engines use algorithms to calculate how worthy a page is to a relevant search query. There are hundreds of factors (Google uses over 200 ranking factors) that are used to calculate the authority of a webpage, and PageRank (based on a scale of 0 – 10) is one of them.

Google assigns PageRank to every webpage it crawls. When another website links to your website, some of its PageRank is passed on to you. The more sites there are out there linking to you, the higher your PageRank will be and the more trustworthy your site will look to search engines.

Crawling

Search engines use bots or “spiders” to crawl billions of pages across the web by following links they find from billions of pages around the web.

Indexing

Search engines then store the information it collects into its index.

Ranking

When a search query is entered, a search engine digs into its index for pages matching the user’s search query, then sorts and displays the most relevant results to the user.

The order in which the pages are displayed are calculated by search engine algorithms, taking into account hundreds of ranking factors. Each page is then given a ranking score.

In order to rank highly on the search engines, your site needs to score higher than all the other sites that are eligible to show up for a relevant search query.

However, be warned that if you engage in shady methods and try to deceive the search engines, you will get yourself burned. Google is very strict on sites that try to manipulate their rankings and if you’re caught doing so, your site will get penalized and removed from the SRPs a.k.a. the “Google Slap”.

Google Major Algorithm Updates: Panda, Penguin, Hummingbird

Every year, Google changes its algorithms some 500 times, that’s 1 – 2 times on average each day. Every once in a while, Google rolls out a major algorithm update, and when they do so, many sites suffer a drop in rankings while many others enjoy a raise in rankings.

Panda (2011)

Lower the rankings of low-quality sites.

Penguin (2012)

Decrease rankings of sites that engage in black-hat SEO.

Hummingbird (2013)

Relevancy and knowledge graph update (Semantic search).

Read Moz.com for more details on the Google algorithm change history.

What are some Black-Hat SEO techniques?

Cloaking – Displaying different results to search engines and users with the intent of manipulating SE rankings.

Mass acquisition of low quality links in a very short period of time.

Overuse of keywords in article title and/or content body in a weak attempt to boost rankings for relevant target keywords or key-phrases.

View Google’s content guidelines on various link schemes to avoid.

How do you do White-Hat SEO?

Well, just avoid doing Black-Hat SEO and you’ll be doing White-Hat SEO

We will cover essential on-page SEO such as image optimization, good internal linking structure, quality and uniqueness/originality of the content, and more later on.

SEO is divided into two parts – Internal SEO, and External SEO

To give you a better picture of SEO, let’s pretend you’re building a new shopping mall.

Before constructing your shopping mall, you first have to take into consideration internal and external factors. Most importantly, you have to take into consideration what makes a great visitor experience.

Internally, what is your shopping mall about? Is the theme of your shopping mall unique? Are different shop themes categorized into different levels? Do visitors find it easy to find their way around the mall?

Externally, have you taken the steps to put the word out that your shopping mall exists? Is your shopping mall listed in map directories, roadside signboards, or brochure stands in neighbouring malls?

If you’ve taken good care of both internal and external factors, chances are your mall will be booming with business.

Similarly, before building your website, have you considered…

Internally, what is your website about?

If you don’t even know what your site is about, it’s very likely search engines won’t as welIs your site’s theme unique in any way?

Search engines love unique content and will reward high quality content. On the other hand, duplicate or scraped content will not do well on the SRPs.

Are your content themes properly organized and well interlinked?

Websites that have clean site structure with content properly organized into different categories enable search engine spiders to easily crawl through internal pages and index them appropriately.

Do users find it easy to navigate through your site?

Search engines can detect whether users will find it easy or not to navigate through a site. A well-organized site provides a good user experience, which is precisely what search engines were built for in the first place. Sites with a clean structure and a clear purpose tend to rank higher on the SRPs.

Externally, have you made the effort to communicate with other webmasters in your related niche?

Search engines encourage you to actively participate in your community and provide value. Providing value to your community boosts your reputation and increases the chances of attracting inbound links to your site.

Are the chances of them linking to your site high?

Have you taken the initiative to share your content through popular social networking sites? If your content is interesting, share-worthy, and of high quality, chances are you will attract a lot of inbound links.

Do you have a lot of other sites linking to your site, increasing your popularity?

The more inbound links (backlinks) you acquire, the more trustworthy search engines will deem your content.

If you answered yes to all the above questions, you’re doing great SEO!

Search engines were built by humans, for humans. Focus your site on delivering a great user experience and you can rest assure that your site will do well on the search engines.

How Can SEO Enhance Your Overall Digital Marketing Strategy?

Improve Overall User Experience On Your Site

Having good knowledge on the topic of internal SEO and on-page ranking factors will help you better organize your site structure (arranging different categories according to specific themes) to deliver a great user experience, construct a good internal linking structure for better user navigation, and make your site more engaging, resulting in higher conversion rates.

Increase Offline Sales

Help your customers find you better with local directory listings such as Google Places, Yelp, and Street Directory.

80% of internet consumers in the product awareness stage conduct research online before deciding whether or not to make a purchase.

Online Reputation Management

Protecting your online reputation is getting more and more important these days as more and more consumers search for brand names on search engines instead of just entering the direct url i.e. “brandname.com” and the last thing you want them to see is a bad review of your company ranking above your company website.

Read more about Google Bombing.

Enhance Your Social Media Marketing Campaigns

By understanding search engine ranking factors and social signals, you will be able to make well-informed decisions when strategizing your social media marketing campaigns.

For example, knowing that Google uses social signals from Google Plus, Facebook, Twitter, Social bookmarking sites, etc, you can better decide where you should focus your social media SEO campaigns on. (Inbound links from Google Plus Pages with many good reviews and blogposts with many +1s, likes, tweets, and reshares tend to give a boost in rankings.)

Mark Traphagen does a personal case study explanation on how Google Plus Profiles and Pages Gain Search Authority.

How Do You SEO a Website?

Today I want to discuss on the topic of SEO or Search Engine Optimization. Search Engine Optimization is a form of art. It requires in-depth knowledge and understanding of how search engine algorithms work, quite a bit of skill, a lot of hard work, and persistence.

So what determines whether a website gets ranked on the top pages of Google? Let’s break it down here. SEO can be broken down into two separate disciplines – Internal SEO, and External SEO.