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.