About Invalid Traffic

Invalid Traffic are the clicks and impressions on AdWords ads that we suspect aren't the result of of true customer interest. Examples of invalid traffic could be clicks and impressions performed by automated tools, as well as accidental clicks. For example, if someone double clicks your ad. You are not charged for invalid clicks and impressions because they are viewed to have little to no value.

Types of Invalid Traffic

• Accidental clicks that provide no value, such as the second click of a double-click
• Manual clicks intended to increase someone's advertising costs
• Manual clicks intended to increase profits for website owners hosting your ads
• Clicks and impressions by automated tools, robots, or other deceptive software
• Impressions intended to artificially lower an advertiser's clickthrough rate (CTR)

How Google Handles Invalid Traffic 

When the system detects invalid clicks on your ad, it automatically filters these clicks out of your reports to avoid you being charged for them. Although the system does this for you, you still have the option of viewing invalid click data if you prefer to.

Sometimes invalid clicks tend to escape through. If this is the case within the past two months, you will receive credit for these clicks. To view these credits for invalid clicks, click the Billing tab. Any invalid click credits you've received will be labeled "Invalid activity" on the transaction history page and will be credited to you. 

New Requirements for High Search Engine Rannkings

With Search Engines having been in the game for quite some time now, marketers have developed new requirements for high search engine rankings. This is known as Google Panda. Google Panda is a change to Google's search results ranking algorithm which was released for the first time in February of 2011.. The change aimed to lower the rank of "low-quality sites" or "thin sites", and return higher-quality sites near the top of the search results.

Good Content 

The Penguin update fights against spam incessantly, and the key to high search engine rankings post Penguin is good content. Google now rewards websites that provide regular, high-quality, useful, and targeted content to its readers.

In order to achieve high rankings, your website will also need to show signs of growth. This is easily achieved with content that is validated by social proof.

Social Proof

Social media now play a critical role in your website’s search engine rankings. Google wants your content to be engaging enough that it gets disseminated across social media platforms. The Penguin update shows an increased reliance on social signals to gauge active curation of good content, and going forward, there is an imperative need for all webmasters to produce high-quality content that gets shared across social platforms.

Author Rank

Author Rank works on an entirely different concept from Google’s Authorship. While Authorship may no longer play a part in ranking factors, Author Rank continues to carry heavy weight in ranking algorithms.

The idea behind Author Rank is that it shows whether a person is or isn’t an authority on a subject matter. The main takeaway is that if your name or website is frequently referred to in a particular area of specialization, Google will determine that your website carries more authority over the rest of the other websites in the same niche, and reward you with higher search engine rankings.

Internal Link

With Google’s Penguin update, link spam is no longer an effective way to boost search engine ranking. Over-optimization of keywords and meta-descriptions also cripple your website’s chances of ranking well.

In relation to good content, an increased importance is placed on internal links within your content. The internal links need to point to other pages within your website that are equally rich in content.

HTTPS a new ranking factor

Apart from website loading speeds and mobile-optimization, HTTPS is now the newest ranking signal in Google’s algorithm. The Penguin update brings with it an increased focus on security; encrypted connections lead to better surfing experiences for Google’s end users, and since April 2014, Google has implemented secure search for all clicks to its paid advertisements. Copyright

Using Dynamic Search Ads

While most search ads take on the help of keywords to determine when they show up on Google Search, Dynamic Search Ads automatically show your ad based on the content of your website. By using these types of ads, you can avoid maintaining a list of key words and landing pages. In addition to these perks, Dynamic Search Ads can also help you gain additional traffic.

Who should use Dynamic Search Ads?

Businesses with websites that contain a lot of content or well-structured URLs will see the best results from using Dynamic Search Ads. Some additional examples are if:

• Your website features different products or services
• You sell seasonal product lines or other offerings, or you're expanding your business to new markets

Why use Dynamic Search Ads? 

Below are some of the benefits of using Dynamic Search Ads:

• Save time.
• Frequent, automatic updates to your ads.
• Show relevant, dynamically-generated headlines with your ads.
• Control your campaign.
• Capture additional traffic.

How Dynamic Search Ads work? 

As I mentioned before,  Dynamic Search Ads do not use keywords. Instead, they use content from your website domain to target your ads to searches. In order to do this, we make use of Google's organic search index of your website to determine which searches might be relevant to the products and services offered on your website. Here is how it works:

• You choose which landing pages to scan: You can choose whether all pages or just specific sections should be used to target your ads by creating dynamic ad targets.
• Your ad will be shown for relevant searches with dynamically-generated text: When search engines that match your dynamic ad targets are found, your ad headlines and landing page URL are generated.

SEO - Social Media Optimization

Social media marketing and optimization is actually rather similar to SEO marketing and optimization. Social media sites haves the capability to measure the overall popularity and then provide each user with the most popular choices. Many of you are familiar with Facebook. Facebook is one of the top leaders when it comes to creating social marketing giants through business tools. In addition to this, it uses a specific formula to give users their custom feedback when they are selecting their favorite and top ranked interactive pages. 

The part that marketers struggle with most throughout this process is engaging with users. As most of us know, blasting advertisements through comments would not be the most effective way of engaging with users. People use social media such as Facebook in order to connect with their friends and have fun therefore it is crucial for marketers not only to advertise but to make it fun. The last thing users want to see is product information piled all over their Facebook. With this in mind, marketers should post informative yet creative posts.

The quality of your interaction is just as important as how often you interact with the users. Providing daily posts is not required and in most cases, is not recommended. However, frequent high quality posts help improve your overall ranking on a user's page because you are interacting with them on a daily basis.

Bidding Stategy

AdWords offers several bid strategies that are tailored to different types of campaigns. Depending on what your campaign is targeting, you can choose which strategy is based catered to your needs.

Here are the bid strategies you can choose from:

Cost-Per-Click (CPC) Bidding: Use if you want to drive customers to your website 

• Manual bidding: choose your own bid amounts
• Automatic bidding: let AdWords set your max

 Cost-Per-Impression (CPM) Bidding: Use if you want to make sure that customers see your message

•  When you set a CPM bid, you set the maximum amount you're willing to pay per 1,000 ad impressions (we call this "max CPM").

Cost-Per-Acquisition (CPA) Bidding: Use if you want maximize conversions on your website 

• CPA bidding is a bidding method that lets you tell AdWords the amount you're willing to pay for a conversion. It can help you reach customers who are likely to take action on your website.

 Demographics: Use if you want to maximize conversions on your website 

You can also use more advanced strategies like bid adjustments to bid more or less competitively across devices, locations, time of day, and more, or flexible bid strategies to automatically set bids to optimize for your performance goals.

SEO - Link Baiting

For those who are not familiar with the term, link baiting is the process in which one uses a bait or a hook to attract back links. In other words, it is something eye catching or exciting on your website that would give others a reason to want to link to it. The bait or hook could come in many forms such as the following:

Resource Hook: Hooks that generally provide useful resources to the audience. People are constantly searching for efficient resources. With this being said, resource hook links act as a strong bait to gain incoming links.

News Hook: This hook is based on providing the latest news first. It could also be a compilation of news stories based on a specific news item. This type of hook works best when its progressed over a certain period of time. One must constantly post things such as interest news articles in order to build credibility over time.

Contrary Hook: A contrary hook does exactly what it says. This hook looks at views which are contrary to a perceived school of thought. It usually takes up the opposing view of what someone has said or written. 

Attack Hook: This hook is quite similar to the contrary hook. The difference here is that this hook is more direct and upfront with its nature. The advantage of this type of hook is that it can attract a generous amount if your content is seen to be credible and authentic.

(In regards to contrary and attack hooks, it is crucial to identify that the information and facts posted are corroborated. If non credible information is posted, it can bring a lot of negative reviews which can initially affect future posts.)

Humor Hook: This type of hook seeks to bring in an aspect of humor into people's daily lives. Many people enjoy a good laugh in the midst of their day and that is exactly what this hook delivers. Since this hook stands out to many people, it is able to bring in quite a few links.

Measuring Return on Investment (ROI)

Whether you are trying to increase sales, generate leads, or drive other customer activity, measuring your return on investment (ROI) is always a good idea. The ROI will help you determine whether the money you are spending towards your AdWords account is reeling in healthy profits for your business.

Understanding ROI

Roi is known to be the most important measurement for an advertiser because it helps the advertiser understand the actual affect his or her advertising efforts are having on their business. ROI is the ratio of your net profit to your costs. The exact method one uses to calculate ROI depends upon the goals of his or her campaign.

The most common way to calculate the ROI is: 

(Revenue - Cost of goods sold) / Cost of goods sold

As far as physical products are concerned, the cost of goods sold is equal to the manufacturing cost of all the items you sold plus your advertising costs, and the revenue is how much profit you will make from selling those products.  Furthermore, the amount you spend for each sale is known as cost per conversion.

Why ROI Matters

As mentioned before, by calculating the return on investment, it it easier to distinguish how much cash inflow has happened by advertising with AdWords. With this being said, you can also use ROI to help you decide how to spend your budget. For example, if you notice one of your campaigns is generating a higher amount of ROI than the others, you can apply more of your specified budget to the successful campaign rather than spend it on campaigns that are not performing so well.

Using Conversions to Measure ROI

In order to begin the ROI process, you must first measure conversions. Conversions are customer actions that you believe are valuable such as purchases, signups, web page visits, or leads. Conveniently, AdWords has a free conversion tracking tool to help track how many clicks ultimately lead to conversions. Conversion tracking can also help you determine the profitability of a keyword or ad, and track conversion rates and costs-per-conversion.

SEO - How to do Branding with SEO

Branding is known to be one of the most crucial objectives of all marketers throughout the world. Many successful companies spent millions of dollars on branding and advertising campaigns before the internet became such a big part within the advertising industry. Ever since the realization was made that search engine listings drive large volumes of traffic to various websites, Search Engine Optimization has become a central online marketing strategy. Many advertising methods have been known to be interruptions to consumer behavior. On the other hand, search engine users actively pin point information which ultimately drive them to the essential source.

Why is Branding Important:

• It helps customers identify  particular business
• "Good branding" helps the brand by  having a specific business bring in loyal customers while maintaining the existing customer base. 
• Branding is an important function of SEO:
• The main aim for search engine optimization is to drive targeted traffic to the marketer's website which results in lead generation as well as online and offline conversions.

The working Mechanism of Search Branding 

1. You index a website
2. Search engines use website's title and description to create the text link (This appears in the SERP's)
3. The title and description work as an advertisement for your business when the users view your search engine listing
4. Each time the viewer uses the listing in the SERP's, it results in branding.

 Search engine optimization aims at increasing website traffic by better search engine listings. This is primarily accomplished by strategically placing keywords in the website content. If keywords that have the brand name are selected, it can do a great job of assisting with the branding process. Hence, promotion of the brand will depend on the selection of relevant keywords and the proper usage of them.

SEO - Visitor Traffic Analysis

It is perceived by many people that the main goal of a Search Engine Optimization campaign is to rank within the top ten on major search engines. Although this plays a very big factor in SEO, it is overpowered by the need to get qualified traffic to your site and converting as much of this traffic into leads or sales.

The visitor traffic analysis can be done in the following ways:

Traffic on keywords: 
 It is important to understand which keywords are working and which ones are not. Keywords have the ability to attract targeted and UN-targeted traffic. The targeted traffic are the consumers who are looking for more information related to your industry. These people find your website through searching for specific keywords.

Keywords on landing page:
The question to be asked here is "which keywords are directing the visitors to which pages." One should spend time to distinguish which pages are generating more traffic and the reasoning behind it. In order to attract more traffic, it is important to include more content for different products and services.

Whether the call to action was followed for conversion:
Marketing experts generally expect the visitors to take a few additional steps when visiting a website such as downloading things, registering, writing reviews, and making further inquiries about certain products. As an SEO consultant, one must have a grasp on whether visitors are taking these actions or not.

Qualified traffic:
Qualified traffic is also known as targeted traffic. You must know the demographics and psycho-graphics of the traffic the website is obtaining for the client. The conversion rate will be only be high if you attract qualified traffic. This can be done by having more precise and targeted keywords.

Converted traffic:
The final aim of a marketer is conversion in terms of sales. You must be able to track how many sales are generating for the client. If you are getting huge traffic but no conversions, this will ultimately be no use to the client.

Understanding Bidding Basics

AdWords gives you several ways to bid for your ads, depending on what matters most to you and your business. Having a perception of what you would like your ads to do will help you decide how to bid. Most advertisers focus on clicks, impressions, or conversions. 

Focus on Clicks 

If your main goal consists of having people visit your website, clicks are a great place to begin. By utilizing cost-per-click (CPC) bidding, you will only be required to pay when someone actually clicks on your ad and visits your site. CPC bidding is made up of two specific choices:

• Automatic bidding:
• This is known to be the easiest way to bid. By setting a daily budget, you will be allowing AdWords to adjust your CPC bids in order to bring you the most attainable bids within that specific budget. 

• Manual bidding:
•  With manual bidding, you will be in full control of you CPC bids. This type of bidding gives you the ability to set your bids at the ad group level. This confirms that you are bidding just what you want for the clicks that hold the most importance for you.

Focus on Impressions 
In opposition to the cost per click method, Impressions focus on paying by the number of times your ad is shown, if your campaign is targeting just the display network. This is refered to as cost-per-thousand impressions (CPM) bidding because you are paying for every 1,000 times your ad appears. It is important to remember that CMP bidding is only applicable for the following campaign types:

• "Display Network Only - All features"
• "Display Network Only - Remarketing"

Focus on Conversions
Conversions are the most advanced bidding method. With this method, you specify the amount you're willing to pay for a conversion, or cost-per-acquisition (CPA). A conversion (also refereed to as acquisition) is a particular action you want to see on your website. You will still be paying for each click but ad words will assist in setting your bids up for you to try and obtain as many conversions as possible regarding the cost-per-acquisition you previously specified. This type of bidding is primarily for more advanced AdWords users.

Tips for Creating Succesful Text Ads

Successful text ads are specific, relevant, attractive, and empowering. The following tips will help you achieve these terrific text ads:

 Watch: Ads that Attract Customers

Highlight what makes you unique 

Tell people what exactly differentiates you from the rest. Showcase the products, services, or offers that make you competitive. Competition plays a big role in the marketing world therefore it is essential to separate yourself from the crowd. 

Include prices, promotions, and exclusives

Google search is the #1 provider for people when making an important decision about something. Having essential information such as the prices and promotions will give the customers the basis of making a decision. 

Empower customers to take action

Make concise statements on how customers can take the next step in the buying process. If you're selling something, tell customers what they can buy. If you're offering a service, inform clients on how they can contact you. Examples of these concise statements may be: purchase, call today, order, browse, sign up, and many more.

Include at least one of your keywords
 Keywords in your ad text portray your ad's relevance to what exactly the customer wants. For example, if you've chosen Arabia coffee as your key word, your ad headline could be "Best Arabia Cofee."

Match your ad to your landing page
Be sure to take a look at the page you're linking to from your ad, also known as the landing page, to make sure the products and promotions included in your ad are also available on the website. People will be quick to judge and leave the website upon not finding what they are looking for.

Appeal to customers on mobile
 People viewing your ads on mobile are more likely to want to know your location or be more prone to call you. Be sure to show your location and phone number in addition to any further extensions. Also, consider creating ads devoted to people on mobile devices, using the mobile version of your website as a landing page, and offering specials suited to a mobile audience.

Experiment
Create three to four ads for each ad group, and use different messages for each to see which does the best. AdWords rotates ads automatically to show the best-performing ads more often.

SEO - Pay Per Click Campaigns

Pay per Click campaigns, also known as PPC, are advertising campaigns that are based off of search engines results page. PPC campaigns are also commonly referenced to search engine advertising in which the payment is based off of the number of times the ad is clicked from the results page. Now the question arises, how do PPC(s) actually work?

One must bid the amount of money he/she is willing to pay per each click. Whoever attains the highest bidding amount is honorary to the top position of the list. In addition to this, you are able to choose specific keywords which will be correlated with when your ad comes up through a search. PPC is known to be a fast and cost effective way to advertise. Small investments can take you a long with Pay per Click campaigns. You will be able to get your target marketing directly to your website in just a few clicks and a small investment. On the other hand, a search engine optimization for any site may take from 3-6 months. With PPC, it only takes about 5 minutes in order to get your ad up at the SERP. 

With the effectiveness of this concept, it is also crucial to keep in mind that bidding on the right type of keywords is the most important aspect of this. Bidding can vary depending on which keyword you are bidding for. Along with this, the ad must be well depicted through its design, persuasion, and information.

Hubspot - Integrating Smarketing

For those who are not familiar with the term, "smarketing" is used to describe the combination of sales and marketing. What many people fail to realize is that although marketing and sales are labeled together many of the times, 87% of the terms sales and marketing use to describe each other are negative. The goal is to bring these two opposing teams in to one in order to gain revenue. Companies with strong sales and marketing alignment get 20% annual growth revenue. Now the real question here is, how can companies integrate smarketing?

There are 5 steps associated with the integration of this term: 

Speak the Same Language

 In other words, have a transparent marketing goal. As I mentioned before, revenue is the key goal for both sides therefore having a prospective number in mind should be the goal. Having the transparent marketing goal so closely related with the sales goal will help assure that the marketing efforts help support sales. Below is an example of how one can work backwards from sales in order to set a marketing goal. 

Set Up Closed-Loop Reporting

There are a few questions one must ask when determining when he or she needs closed-loop reporting. These questions consist of:

• Do you send leads to Sales and never hear if they were good?
• Do you end up creating and trying to manage duplicate leads?
• Do you send leads to Sales with the basic content information without intelligence about what content those leads consumed?
• Are you unsure of the impact your marketing efforts have on revenue?

Implement a Service Level Agreement

A Sales-Marketing SLA defines what each team commits to accomplishing in order to support the other. The SLA formalizes the goals of each team to make sure the company is set up to reach its revenue goal.

Maintain Open Communication

Having weekly smarketing meetings is crucial in this aspect. This will assist in your entire Sales and Marketing teams get on the same page about: team success, product info, persona education, and SLA waterfalls. However, it is also important to remember that meetings are not the only means of communication.

Rely On Data

A key part of the smarketing relationship is relying on the data. A great tool one can use are marketing and sales dashboards. These initially include all the common reports that are lined along the set revenue goals. By creating a shared dashboard and making it accessible to the teams, it will become easier to track progress from both sides. 

Understanding ad reach

To begin with, reach is an estimate of the number of users which are residing in a selected location target, based on the cookies. With the reach number, you are able to attain a slight idea of how many users your AdWords could potentially reach in a specific geographic area. For example, you can easily estimate  how many customers will see you ads in Chicago versus in Michigan. With this, you will be able obtain details on the reach level of each area and eventually decide if you have targeted the right area. When selecting a location to target in AdWords, the locations estimated reach can be found in the reach column. This is seen below:

Reach in AdWords is generated through the estimation of numbers that were seen on Google properties within the indicated geographic area. This is mainly the reason behind why reach numbers in AdWords may differ extensively from census population numbers. The following factors play a crucial role in estimating reach numbers:

• Number of devices
• Number of web browsers
• Number of temporary visits
• Length of time
• Cookies
• Search partner or Google display network

SEO - Google Toolbar Links

There are three different types of links found in the Google toolbar that assist in building a campaign. These three links consist of :

• One Way Linking
• Reciprocal Linking
• Triangular Linking

 Now let's go into more depth about each one of these links.

One Way Linking

One way linking is seen to be one of the best ways to increase a campaign's rank within search engines. This is primarily because your link is being put on the site without an exchange of another link. Since other websites are acclaiming your your site without linking back, it gives search engines the idea that your site holds a higher standard of importance. With this, they believe you can provide outstanding customer service to your clients.As mentioned before, since there is no exchange with other links, the outcome of associating with bad links can be easily avoided. It is crucial to remember that if the back link being exchanged is not relevant, the page rank of this site will eventually decrease due to the little or no value given to and by the customers.

Reciprocal Linking 

This type of linking is known to be the most popular of the three when building a campaign. Reciprocal thinking means exactly what its name depicts. This is when two websites consent to an agreement of linking to each other. It can often be referred to as different titles such as link swaps, link exchanges, and link partners.Reciprocal linking enhances trust between two websites as well as assurance of your website. This link basically clarifies that they the site at the other end believes your site is worth linking to. This is when the element of trust falls in. Since the other site has established that they believe you are worth the link, it is vital to maintain your own site to keep the other site in good ranks. Before setting up a reciprocal link, there is an efficient amount of information that needs to be acquired. Just like many other campaigns, a competitive analysis is a must. Initially, this will assist in giving you more valuable information in regards to potential link partners. 

Triangular Linking 

This type of linking emerged shortly after people discovered that one way linking was near impossible. Triangular linking is looked down upon search engines because it was generated as a way to fool these engines into thinking you have not actually engineered a reciprocal link trade. This is done by placing a link on the website but putting the others link on a different website.

Building the best keyword list

A list of keywords can be very useful in regards to the target market you would like viewing your ads. Since customers search for particular terms, your keywords should counterpart the terms that your prospective customers would use in order to find your products or services.

As far as choosing and organizing your keywords goes, there are a few basic tips which you should follow for the best outcomes:

1. When you create your list, think like a customer: Take time out to write down the main categories of your business including the phrases that would under each of these categories.
2. Choose broad or specific keywords  which are contingent to your goal: By selecting terms which directly relate to to your ad's theme, your ad will only appear for terms that apply to your business. On the other hand, choosing more general keywords will help reach as many people as possible. 
3. Set similar keywords into themes: It is more effective to group your keywords into groups based on your different products, services, and categories. This will help refrain from confusing and unwanted ads towards the customer.
4. Pick an efficient number of keywords: Although you are allowed more than 20 keywords per ad group, many advertisers find it convenient to have between 5 and 20. 

In addition to these starter tips, one should also consider these advanced tips in order to better control who sees his or her ads:

1. Use keyword match types to more efficiently control who views your ads:  Here is a quick video on How to choose keywords
2. Choose keywords that relate to the websites your customers see. 

Hubspot - Social Media's Impact on Inbound Strategy

In today's age, social media has become a normality in many people's lives. It is a way for people to communicate with others, express their thoughts, and share their lives with one another. Similarly, social media has made a big impact on the progress of inbound methodology. Social media are where most of the prospects lie therefore it is crucial to be apart of it. This can be proven by a study that concluded that internet users spend four times more time on Facebook than Google. No matter your persona, chances are they use social media. The numbers listed below will help gain a better understanding of the importance social media plays in people's lives today. 

Active Users

• Facebook: 1.3 billion
• Twitter: 645 billion
• LinkedIn: 300 million
• Google+: 300 million

With so many prospective clients lying within social media, social media is a great way to attract traffic towards your sight. In addition to this, chances of increasing visits, leads, and customers is at great heights. Customer acquisition has made its way to the top through the help of many of these social media sites.

SEO - The Importance of Content

You would like to attract more visitors to your site but are unsure how to do it? This is when content comes into play! Content is the initial aspect that labels a website as good or bad. Not only does content bring the website to ranks within the visitor's eyes, it also leads search engines to give it higher importance. It is crucial to remember that information is primarily what makes up these websites therefore search engines will put the most emphasis on the content in contrast to everything else.

It takes more than just one look at the website for a search engine to rank its content. There are many factors which contribute towards this very rank. The visitor's benefit should be one of the bigger concerns for a website therefore the content must consist of important information which pertains to the target audience. In addition to this, most search engines believe that users are always looking for new and original content. With this being said, original and well written content is greatly admired by many. 

Although content is one of the main factors in creating a website, it is not the only one. It is given so much importance by search engines because it is known to be the backbone of any website. However, the main purpose of a website is to offer as much information and detail as possible. As I mentioned before, the target audience plays a key role in this process therefore one should know exactly who his or her target audience is and what interests them. 

Some core questions to ask yourself when developing content:

• What does the audience want to find?
• Will you have to do additional research?
• Are you an expert writer or do you have one on staff?

Interpretating Your Campaign Status

Once you have started a campaign, it is crucial to regularly review its status in order to establish it is running the way you would like it to. The status column of your "All Online Campaigns" page tells you whether your campaigns are active as well as limited by budget you had previously set. 

How to find your campaign status:

1. Sign into your AdWords account at http://adwords.google.com 
2. Click on the campaigns tab to be directed to the "All Online Campaigns" page
3. Find the "Status" column located near the "Budget" column.

This status column will depict the present state of each campaign in your AdWords account as shown below. With this, you can view how each campaign is doing as well as detect any errors that may have occurred.

 

 Each campaign can withhold one of seven different statuses.

• Eligible: active and can show ads
• Paused: Inactive because it has been paused. This means your ads do not show or accrue new costs until they are resumed.
• Removed: Inactive because it has been removed. Similar to paused (ads will not show or accrue new costs until re-enabled.)
• Pending: Inactive but scheduled to start at a future date.
• Ended: Inactive because it has passed its scheduled end date.
• Suspended: Inactive because the balance you previously paid has been used. No ads will be shown in addition to any accrued costs until further funds are added under the billing section.
• Limited by budget: Active, but due to budget constraints, ads are only shown sporadically.

SEO - Search Engines vs. Directories

As the internet has developed over the past decades, fetching information became a big struggle for day-to-day workers. With the web being so assorted, it can often be found difficult to obtain the exact or relevant information someone is searching for. This is primarily the reason why search engines were made. The  concise definition of a  "search engine" is a program that searches documents for specified keywords and returns a list of the documents where the keywords were found. According to a nationwide phone survey by Pew Internet & American Life Project shows, "84% of internet users have used search engines."

Examples of Major Search Engines: Google, Bing, and Ask

Although directories hold many of the same factors as search engines, they differentiate through the human factor behind it. A web directory is a web search tool compiled by human editors. While sites within search engines are scanned and resulted by a program crawler, sites are edited manually within directories.
 
Largest Directories: Yahoo and DMOZ

Both search engines and directories intertwine on the basis of supplier and receiver.  Since there are numerous search engines available on the internet, it is not possible for each and every one to constantly maintain and update their database. The supplier and receiver relationship is a crucial part of understanding the ranking system within websites.

Hubspot - Creating Remarkable Blog Content

A business blog is a collection of articles that provide helpful, valuable, educational, and remarkable content to your target audience. With this value, blogs can easily and effectively draw prospects to your website. When drawing these prospects to your blog, it is vital that you have the right type of content which he or she may be searching for. In other words, the content must be worth talking about. With remarkable content, you can gain rewards in many different forms such as social shares or more importantly, inbound links. Inbound links are a way for search engines to establish the ability level of your website.

Steps to Creating Remarkable Blog Content:

Keep your buyer persona in mind:  The visitor (ideal buyer) should be your main focus.

 Address one topic per blog post: This will help keep posts clear and concise

Blog consistently and frequently: Publish often as often you want to get found online. Consistent blogging boosts inbound ROI as seen below

Concentrate on formatting and imagery: Use formatting to draw the attention of the reader and keep them there.

Don't miss out on lead conversion opportunities: Add a call-to-action to your blog and blog post.

Structuring AdWords Accounts

Creating a well structured campaign through themes and products is crucial in the field of marketing. This is exactly what an AdWords account assists in doing. With an AdWords account, you can do things such as determine which ads are bringing in the best conversions, have control over budgets, as well as manage and edit your campaigns easily. With a well structured campaign, you will also have a better quality score. This score will be generated through a set of ads and keywords that have direct relation towards each other.

There are three primary tips that one should follow while structuring their account. To begin with, one should organize their campaign to mirror his or her website. As I mentioned before, ads and keywords play a vital role in the quality score of a campaign. By creating a campaign to mirror your website, you can also create lists of keywords that directly correspond with texts on the ads as well as ads that directly link a customer to that product's page on the website. A good account structure would follow a similar technique as the visual below. 

It is also important to remember to create separate campaigns  for multi-region advertising. In other words, if you have stores in two different countries, setting up two different campaigns would be the smarter decision. By doing this, each campaign can fully target the separate locations by giving the correct type of  information. Each campaign must be translated into the right language based on the region, as well as specify that your products are available in that country.

Lastly, one should use AdWords editor to manage his or her campaigns. This is a free Google application which efficiently helps make quick changes whether it be removing a keyword or adding ten more. In addition to these quick fixes, this application can also perform advanced searches, sort and view performance statistics, copy or move items between campaigns, and export snapshots to make sharing your account even easier.

Website Optimization

Website optimization has had its share of confusion through the minds of many due to the versatility this concept holds. Optimization is known as an act, process, or methodology of making something as fully perfect, functional or effective as possible. With this being said, you may wonder how website optimization takes place when trying to complete this process. The confusion here comes from the fact that website optimization is made up of many different concepts, not just one. Many people mistake this term being primarly about "Search Engine Optimization (SEO)." In other words, people still believe website optimization means ranking at the top of a search engine. Although this notion still plays an important role, it does not complete web optimization as a whole. 

 

There happen to be many different types of web optimization. These may vary throughout different companies as well as the roles within these companies.  The different types of web optimization consist of:

• Search engine ranking
• User experience
• Lead Conversions
• Customer acquisitions
• Customer Delight 

 Marketers may be more interested in search engine ranking, user experience, and lead conversions while people in sales may care about customer acquisitions. This clearly depicts that website optimization can hold several different meanings based on the company or people within the company. However, If a website does hold all five of these concepts, it is known to be fully optimized based upon the inbound methodology.

Ad Words

Understanding AdWords is known to be quite complex. Although there are many aspects that come together in order to make AdWords possible, I chose to focus mainly on the ad auction for this blog post because that came across as the most interesting to me. This is essentially the starting point to any mainstream search. I have always wondered how which ads are placed where and the process they go through in order to distinguish this. There is a six step process that all ads go through in order to make this possible.

The first step is obviously the search. From this, we move onto the second step which is where the ads are whittled down. For example, If I searched for "coffee shop", The AdWords system would go ahead and search for keywords that most closely match the phrase I am searching. This takes us to the third step in which the AdWords system will narrow down the search by ignoring any ads that are not eligible such as ones that disapproved or target a foreign country. After these three steps are completed, the ads are ordered. This is primarily when the auctioning begins. These ads are based off a formula called "ad rank"which is a combination of bid amount, the quality of your ads and landing page, and the expected impact of any other aspects such as extensions and ad formats.

 After this process is completed, the ads will appear for coffee shops. Although this completes the process, it does not bring it to an end. The auction process is constantly changing with different results all based on the competition there is. With this being said, it is normal for positions on a page to fluctuate.

Week 1 Marketing 348 - Inbound Marketing

Through years of traditional marketing, inbound marketing has made its way to the top of many marketing agencies. As many people recognize, traditional marketing is filled with advertisements (also likely to be called "interruptions.") In opposition to this, inbound marketing promotes companies not with advertisements but other attractive concepts such as blogs, eBooks, webinares, social media marketing, and etc. Traditional marketing, being filled with things such as cold calling, telemarketing, spam, and advertisements, is known as outbound marketing. Inbound marketing has a goal of empowering customers by attracting them to the information they are looking for without interruptions that may divert their attention.

Inbound marketing is strategically formed through something called "The Inbound Methodology." This is a plan in which it is distinguished what must be done in order to gain clients all the way to keeping them. It goes in the order of attract --> convert --> close --> delight. In the convert period of this cycle, potentials customers are turned into leads which initially turn into actual customers during the close period. The delight portion is based on how to keep customers around as well as gain new ones. The goal is to get strangers to visit the website and promote.