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Your Complete Guide to a Great Google My Business Listing

Google My Business is a free tool that lets you manage your presence on Google – the world’s most popular search engine with a 72.48% share of the market – in searches and on Google Maps.It enables you to tell the story of your business, including photos and reviews, and share important information with potential customers before they’ve even clicked through to your website.

This complete guide will walk you through creating, claiming or verifying a listing as well as how to optimise the features that can help you to grow your business.

Part one: How to create a listing on Google My Business

Step one: Check whether you already have a presence on Google My Business

Even if you can’t remember setting up a Google My Business page for your company, it does sometimes happen that profiles have already been created but not claimed and verified.

Your first step, therefore, should be to check whether you already have a Google My Business presence.

Type in your “business name & town/city” to see if a branded Knowledge Panel comes up.

(Knowledge Panel is the information box about a business that sometimes appears on the right-hand side of search engine results pages (SERPs) on desktops or at the top of SERPs on mobile devices).

If that doesn’t bring up any results, you might want to try searching for your business address or business phone number to see what shows up in the search results.

It’s worth doing this in both Google and Google Maps to be on the safe side.

As you can see below, when I do a search for ‘SEO+ Devon’, the branded Knowledge Panel appears on the right-hand side of the search results in addition to the two appearances on page one of Google.

Because I have control of SEO+’s Google My Business presence, I am able to provide all sorts of helpful information to potential customers about my services.

In the style of one of the old ‘Choose your own adventure’ books (remember those?), you’ll need to take one of three paths at this point.

If your business has no Google My Business presence, go to Step two

If you appear to have an unverified or unclaimed Google My Business page, head to Step three.

If your business already has a verified listing but you’re not able to modify the content, jump straight to Step four.

  Step two: Create a new listing

If no Knowledge Panel comes up for your business and you don’t appear to have a Google My Business presence yet then it’s time to get your company on the (Google) map.

Head to https://www.google.com/business/ and click the ‘Start now’ option.

If you already have a Google account, you will need to log in when prompted. If you don’t yet have a Google account, click ‘Create account’ as shown below.

Once you’re logged in, you’ll be prompted to enter the name of your business before adding its address and postcode.

It’s important to list this information correctly with no typos and how the address will appear on other online directories and on your website. Google looks for consistency in how businesses are listed across multiple sources and Google My Business should always be correct.

On the ‘Where are you located?’ screen (see below), you’ll notice a tick box against the statement, ‘I deliver goods and services to my customers’. Tick this if you don’t have a bricks and mortar business – for example, if you work from home and don’t have customers come to your work address – or if you provide a mobile service where you deliver your products or services to your clients.

If you tick this box, you will also be asked whether you want to hide your address from your listing (and Google Maps) and just show your region in the address field instead.

At this stage in the sign-up process, you’ll be notified if there’s already a Google My Business page associated with the street address. If there is, you will have the option to go to the existing page and edit/improve it (unless it’s managed by someone else – see Step Four below).

If there are no matches for your business, you may be asked to pinpoint its exact location on Google Maps before you continue. Google will help you by dropping the pin on the map based on the address provided but you can move it around if it’s not quite right.

You will then be taken to a screen (see below) where, if you’ve ticked that you deliver to your customers, you can add the geographical areas you serve, setting either a radius around your business location or covering specific areas.

If you choose the ‘Specific areas’ option, you can enter areas, towns/cities, regions or postcodes.

With this information complete or if you haven’t ticked the ‘I deliver….’ tick box, Google will ask you to set a category for your business.

You should choose a primary category that best sums up to potential customers what you offer.

Where does the bulk of your business come from? What phrase would people be most likely to search for if they wanted to find your business? This will usually be your primary category.

Don’t worry, you should show up in other related searches too. To use Google’s example, if you were to enter ‘pizza restaurant’ as your primary category, your business might appear in searches for related terms such as ‘restaurants’, ‘Italian restaurants’ or ‘pizza’.

You can use additional secondary categories to be more specific about products or services that you offer once you’ve set up your profile.

It’s also worth thinking about whether there could be any ambiguity around your business type/category.

You can’t create your own category so, if the category you had in mind isn’t there, opt for the closest existing alternative instead.

Each time you add or edit a category after your Google My Business listing goes live, you might be asked to verify your page again so that Google knows the changes are correct and genuine.

Some categories on Google My Business have Category-specific features. For example, hotel listings show class ratings and amenities; food businesses can list menu items and give URLs for online orders, reservations and menus; and businesses offering appointments can add a booking button to their profile or update their menu of services.

Once you’ve chosen your primary business category, Google will take you to a new screen where you can add your contact phone number and website address.

The initial set up of your Google My Business page is nearly over. You’ll now see this message:

Once you hit ‘Finish’, you’ll see a message saying, “Success! Your listing has been created. Choose a way to verify.”

Most people have to select to verify their listing by receiving a postcard featuring the verification code at their postal address. Other options such as phone or mobile verification are offered to selected businesses. Once again, it’s essential that your address is correct in Google so that you receive the postcard ASAP.

As soon as the postcard arrives, you simply need to enter the verification code and the Google My Business page you set up is officially yours.

You can choose to verify your page at a later date but do note that you won’t be able to fully manage your listing until you’re verified.

Note: On the Google My Business community forums on 17th July 2018, Allyson Wright – Google My Business community manager – announced that they are rolling out a new feature where users will be notified when their profiles go live in Google Maps and Google Search. At the moment, this doesn’t apply to bulk listings; also, you must have your language settings set to US-Eng. It will be rolling out more widely soon.

Now go to Part two: How to build an engaging Google My Business listing.

  Step three: Claiming or verifying an existing listing

As I mentioned above, it does sometimes happen that a business has a Google My Business presence even though you haven’t created it.

Any Google user can create a listing so a customer might have loved your business and done it for you.

The thing is that you will need to claim and verify the listing in order to have control over the information published.

Below you can see an example of an unclaimed listing for an Italian café/restaurant in my hometown (don’t worry, I’ve been in touch while writing this blog!):

We can see that it’s an unclaimed listing on both desktop and mobile views because Google asks ‘Own this business?’ and gives the searcher the option to claim and verify it as belonging to them.

Having looked at the business’s busy Facebook page, I think the opening hours may be listed incorrectly on Google; there’s also no web address and a potential customer’s question has gone unanswered.

If the owner of the business verified the listing, they could have control over the correct information.

If you find a listing that looks like this for your business, then hit the ‘Own this business?’ link and go through the stages listed in Step two: Create a new listing above.

Step four: Requesting ownership of a verified listing

Occasionally, people find that not only is their business already on Google My Business but that it’s been verified and is owned by someone else.

This is most common in the case of franchises where the overall owner/manager of the franchise group has added and verified multiple franchise locations in bulk and retains management of the different locations.

If, for any reason, someone else has claimed and verified a listing for your business, your first task is to request that the ownership for the listing is transferred to you.

Google gives a full breakdown of how to do this here.

To get you started, go to https://business.google.com/create and enter your business name. If the business has been claimed and verified by someone else, you will see the following message:

Could you have set up the page a long time ago and forgotten? If you recognise the email address as one you’ve used in the past then you will need to follow the ‘Account Recovery help guide’ link.

If not, your next step is to hit the ‘Request Access’ button, fill out the form and ‘Submit’.

It takes approximately seven days to process ownership requests on Google My Business. The current page owner will receive an email asking them to get in touch with you and you’ll also receive an email from Google confirming that your request has been logged.

If your request is approved, you should find that the business appears in your Google My Business dashboard and that you are able to edit the page.

If your request is denied, the email from Google stating, “Your request to access [Business Name] on Google My Business was rejected” should contain the option to appeal the decision with the relevant instructions.

If the current page owner doesn’t respond within seven days, Google may give you the option to claim or verify the listing yourself but this will depend on your individual case.

In the meantime, you may be able to suggest edits to the page even if you can’t do them yourself.

‘Suggest an edit’ and ‘Answer quick questions’ features

While I’m on the subject of being able to suggest edits, it’s important for anyone who has a Google My Business profile to be aware of the ‘Suggest an edit’ feature that appears on the Knowledge Panel in search results:

This quite literally allows any searcher to go into your Google My Business listing and make changes. In theory, you could be vulnerable to a competitor trying to change your hours of business (even listing you as ‘closed’) or changing your contact details, categories or business description.

You won’t necessarily receive a notification or alert from Google about changes made to your listing so you should check your dashboard regularly to see whether all of the information is correct.

Another feature to be aware of is one that encourages people who are familiar with a business to answer quick questions about it. This is because Google wants to create communities who can share useful information about businesses they love and use.

If we go back to the unclaimed listing example for a local Italian restaurant that I used above, you can see that searchers have the option to respond to common questions such as ‘Is this place suitable for groups?’ when they click on the ‘Know this place? Answer quick questions’ option.

Again, it’s important to keep an eye on the responses people are giving to these questions to make sure the information circulated about your business is accurate.

Now your Google My Business page is up and running, we’re going to look in Part Two at how you can optimise it and make it as engaging as possible for potential customers.

  Part two: How to build an engaging Google My Business listing

Google offers a number of different features to help you make your Google My Business listing as engaging as possible. When new features are rolled up, it’s always worth looking into how you might utilise them to grow your business.

1.   Writing posts

Most businesses can feature different post types on their Google My Business listing. These are a bit like having an advert or a social media status within the Knowledge Panel in Google searches.

At the time of writing, businesses in the ‘Hotel’ category and some others do not have the posts feature. This post from Search Engine Journal gives you some pointers about who to contact about this if you do want to add a post.

The great thing about the posts feature is that you can tell searchers about your sales, events or products on the search results page before they’ve ever clicked through to your website.

As an example, here’s the prompt to set up a product post:

When you click on the ‘Try it now’ button, you actually have the option to post about:

What’s new

An event

An offer

A product

Depending on which option you choose, you will be able to add specific information to your post such as:

A photo or video

100-300 words of promotional copy

The dates, times and venue of an event

The nature and duration of an offer

The price of a product

Product details

You can also add a call to action button to any Google My Business post. The current call to action options are:

Book [an appointment]

Order online

Buy

Learn more

Sign up

Get offer

Call now

The Booking facility is particularly powerful because searchers can book an appointment with you without even having to visit your website. This feature is available if you use scheduling software that currently integrates with Google My Business – you can find a full list of current and forthcoming integrations here.

Ideas for posts

If you’re not sure what to post about, why not try some or all of the following ideas?

Advertise new products or services you’re offering

Share the details of a forthcoming event or provide a link to an ‘Early Bird’ ticket deal

Showcase a trending new product with a link to your web store

Attract signups to your next webinar

Advertise your next networking event

Let people book a place on your next training course, e.g. dog training classes

Post a seasonal message such as wishing searchers a happy New Year

Tell people about a time-limited offer and discount and how they can take advantage – here’s an example from Google:

Tell searchers about your latest blog article or an old article that’s still popular. Here’s an example of my latest Google My Business post

  As you can see, posts are a fantastic way to provide extra value and stand out on search results pages.

Posts without a specific end date stay live for seven days whereas event or offer posts will no longer be visible once the end date has passed.

Google My Business posts are especially prominent in mobile searches as you can see from the screenshot below so it’s important to post regularly to make the most of this key bit of real estate on Google.

Using emojis in Google My Business posts

You could even take things a step further by including emojis in your Google My Business posts. Google is beginning to index and place more value on emojis and emoji SEO is most definitely on its way.

It’s already possible to search using certain emojis – for example, use a pizza emoji and ‘near me’ and you will get search results for local pizza places. It’s not yet as comprehensive or accurate as a text search but in time, it may well be.

One emoji per post is probably enough. I haven’t personally tested the impact of emojis in Google My Business posts but, at the very least, this could be another way to stand out in searches and tap into the emoji trend.

2.   Adding your info

If you click on the ‘Info’ option in the left-hand menu of your Google My Business dashboard, you will have the opportunity to add to and edit the information you publish about your business in the Knowledge Panel. This includes your:

Business name

Category

Address

Opening hours

Special opening hours

Contact numbers

URL

A specific URL for booking appointments (if applicable)

Services

Business description

Opening date

Photos

There are also some advanced features for those of you who use Google AdWords or have multiple store locations with associated Google My Business listings.

The Services feature is primarily available to businesses in the food, hospitality, health and beauty sectors or other types of businesses that have a list of priced services. This is the perfect place to list your current menu or price list so that people know how much you charge before they even make an enquiry.

Always remember to update your services list and the associated prices if anything changes so that you’re publishing the most up-to-date information.

The Business description is a relatively new feature that allows you to add up to 750 characters describing your business – sort of an elevator pitch to attract potential customers. Google has posted more information about this feature in its Help documents, including the following example:

Google only shows the first 250 characters in the Knowledge Panel so I recommend putting the most relevant information first in the Business Description.

At the moment, this feature appears near the bottom of the Knowledge Panel below the Reviews section and is headed, From <business name, e.g. SEO+. Searchers have to click on ‘more’ to read the full description.

You can only see this feature on mobile devices if you click on the ‘About’ tab.

3.   Adding photos and videos

Another way to make an impact with your Google My Business listing is to add some photos and videos to your page.

Don’t worry, you don’t need to bring a professional production crew in and spend loads of money – a few snaps from your smartphone are more than enough.

Google My Business gives you the opportunity to add a profile picture (the same as on your social media channels is ideal for continuity), a cover photo, photos of the outside of your premises and much more.

People love pictures of you and/or your team going about your day, other customers, services being delivered, products being created and so on.

Keep forgetting to add pictures to Google My Business? There’s now a service called LocalPics that will text you a reminder at whatever intervals you set for up to ten different business locations. You don’t even have to login to Google My Business to post new images via this service (it’s currently available on a 14-day free trial and then costs $9/month).

If you only have one location and/or one person managing your Google My Business profile then it would be enough to set a regular reminder on your phone or computer. Or why not upload a picture to Google every time you post one of your business on social media?

Do note that customers can also add photos of your business, products or services to your Google My Business page. They do this by choosing the ‘Add a photo’ option in the top-right of the Reviews panel.

You can manage the photos that other people upload to your page via your Google My Business dashboard.

It’s now also possible for you to add videos to your Google My Business page. Google recommends that any videos are:

Duration:Up to 30 seconds long

File Size:Up to 100 MB

Resolution:720p or higher

The content of the video should reflect your business without being overly promotional. As with the photos, people want to see what your business is actually like – a sneak peek through the door at your premises and customers – so that they know what to expect if they pop in for a visit or get in touch.

If you feature two or more videos on your page, a special ‘Videos’ sub-tab will appear within your business’s Knowledge Panel in mobile searches.

4.   Messaging

Google has been rolling out a messaging facility on Google My Business since mid-2017 and it is not yet available for all listings. In addition, searchers are currently only able to see the messaging feature if they perform a mobile web search on Chrome.

If you do have the messaging feature, it’s a fantastic way to encourage searchers to contact you without even having to visit your website.

If you want to keep your business messages separate from your personal text messages, you can use Google’s Allo messaging app to view and respond to messages.

You can read more about the messaging feature on the Search Engine Land blog.

Answering questions

On the Knowledge Panel about your business in Google searches, people can now ask questions about your business and your answers will be published to be visible in searches. This is a great way of answering common customer questions and helping people to decide whether or not they want to buy from your business.

When someone clicks on the ‘Be the first to ask a question’ option above or the ‘Ask a question’ button and sends a question, you should receive an email notification so that you can respond.

Tip: Compile your own list of frequently asked questions and answers and post them to your Google My Business listing under the Questions & Answers feature. This can help to pre-empt common questions.

If someone asks a question that is particularly important or asked regularly, it’s fine to up vote it with a ‘Thumbs up’ as Google says this can help to make specific Q&As more visible.

You can read Google’s Questions & Answers guidelines here – remember that, like the ‘Suggest an edit’ feature, other people can answer questions so it’s important to check that your customers are responding accurately if anyone does reply before you.

Attracting reviews

Each year, the BrightLocal Local Consumer Review Survey shows us how important genuine customer reviews are to businesses.

The 2017 survey found that 85% of consumers trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations. In addition, positive reviews make 73% of consumers more likely to trust a local business.

Google is one of the most important sources of customer reviews. If you can attract reviews on your profile, it’s a fantastic way of standing out from your competitors in local searches.

For example, when SEO+ appears in the ‘local pack’ of three listings at the top of a search for ‘SEO services devon’, the searcher’s eyes are immediately drawn to the listings with star ratings and reviews. In the listings below, SEO+ has 24 Google reviews against the three reviews associated with its competitor. Knowing that – according to the BrightLocal survey – people like to read at least seven reviews about a business before they make contact, this puts SEO+ at an advantage.

Although you’re dependent on your customers to leave reviews, Google is happy for you to ask clients to provide feedback (as long as there’s no bribery, coercion or payment to secure reviews, of course).

Google’s current guidelines forbid the following:

Leaving a review for your own business

Past or current employees leaving negative reviews about a business

Leaving negative reviews on competitors’ pages to manipulate the reviews feature

To make things as easy as possible, you could always send a link to your customers taking them straight through to the Google Reviews feature. You can do this by:

On your computer, search for your business on Google.

Find your business listing and click Write a review.

Copy and paste the URL you see in your address bar.

If these steps don’t work for you, you’ll need to use the PlaceID Lookup Tool instead. You can find instructions for how to do this here.

Once you have managed to attract some reviews on your Google My Business page, I always recommend posting a response, even if it’s just a short and sweet, “Thank you”.

If someone leaves a negative review, it’s important to respond in a courteous and professional manner. Tell the reviewer that you would like to hear more about their experience to see if you can help in some way. This will serve you better than responding defensively.

People don’t expect or fully trust a profile that has 100% five-star reviews but they will want to see how you respond to feedback.

Of course, if you get a one-star review from someone who is clearly a troll, it’s probably not worth responding. People are pretty good at spotting unfair or fake reviews.

Website builder

In the Google My Business dashboard, you will also see a ‘Website’ option in the left-hand menu. This is a feature that Google rolled out in 2017, as reported by Search Engine Land and others.

The Google My Business website builder is aimed at small businesses who need a web presence but who don’t yet have the time, money or focus to create a business website.

The website builder draws all of its information from your Google My Business profile and presents it as a simple, attractive website.

This service is free to use, mobile-friendly and easy to update. However, you need to buy a custom domain name through Google if you don’t want to use the more generic URL you’re assigned.

Managing your Google My Business page

Once your Google My Business page is up and running, there are several ways to access it to manage and update the content.

If you search for your business in Google, you should see a little editing panel at the top of the SERP next to the Knowledge Panel that gives various suggestions about what you could add to your page, e.g. create an AdWords campaign, add some images or create a new post.

Alternatively, you can go into your Google My Business dashboard and update your profile from there. If you have several pages or businesses in several locations, just hit the ‘Manage locations’ option to navigate between profiles.

The Insights option on the main menu in your dashboard takes you through to some helpful data about how your profile is performing. This includes:

The search terms most used to find you

Whether searches were for your business specifically or for your products/services

Whether people found your business in searches or on Google Maps

Customer actions (e.g. website visits, request directions, calls)

Phone call data

Photo views and quantity in comparison to your competitors

The insights can be a good source of inspiration about how to improve your profile and what search terms to target.

Why every business should optimise their Google My Business listing(s)

We know that Google is always exploring ways to provide searchers with the information that’s most relevant to their search quickly and easily.

Google My Business is the ideal platform to show the search engine that you’re engaged with potential and existing customers. You can show this by providing as much helpful information as possible, relevant images and videos, contact details and more.

If Google sees that people are clicking to read your reviews, opting to call you, reading your posts, visiting your website or viewing your pictures, all from your Google My Business page, it’s a strong signal about the relevance of your content.

In turn, this should help you to achieve more appearances in the ‘local pack’ of local search pages and increase your organic rankings overall.

When was the last time you updated your Google My Business page? Are you using all of the features mentioned above? If not, are there any that you might start using now? I’d love to hear your thoughts about Google My Business.

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The post Your Complete Guide to a Great Google My Business Listing appeared first on Gorilla Authority.

#brand awareness #brand identity #seo #content management #content syndication #local citations

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Learn How To Get Your Local Business Ranked in Google Search

New and established business owners struggle with Local SEO and getting their sites ranked in Google, but you can learn how to get your local business ranked right now.

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Finding people, places and things has never been easier, but the struggle is real for many businesses trying to be the one that gets found.

For the user finding what you want is a simple as;

“Ok Google, Restaurants Near Me”

“Ok Google, Cinema Halls Near Me”

This “near me” feature is intriguing and it marks how significantly important local search has become for small businesses.

Nearly 85% shoppers search for local businesses online and 61% of local searchers make a purchase within 2 hours.

Local search is booming rapidly and if your local business still lacks an online presence, then you are missing out on a lot of opportunities to generate sales.

Paying attention to these local SEO tactics to optimise your local business for better ranking can generate online visibility for it.

So, let’s walk through these simple steps of getting your local business ranked.

1. Google My Business

Google suggests local results depending on the searcher’s location and distance plus query relevance and business prominence.

If you are not able to see your local business ranked in the search results, it is probably because you have not registered it in Google My Business.

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Google My Business accounts for 19.01% of local search ranking factors. So, it is necessary for local businesses to register in it.

What Details Does “Google My Business” Ask For?

Inform Google about the exact location of your business. This allows the searchers to easily locate your store.

With the working hours detail, searchers can check if your store is open or not, this helps them decide the right time to visit your store.

  Visuals are always pleasing plus they help in locating a store more accurately. Images give the searcher an idea about your store offerings.

Including enough information to help the searcher contact your business in any particular way sends out a positive image of it. In Google My Business, you can include information such as your business name, address, phone number, website URL, services, opening date, etc.

That’s How It Appears In Google

2. Presence In Local Citations & Directories

Around 13.31% of the local ranking factors are dominated by citations and directories.

They play an important role in suggesting appropriate local results to the searchers based on their query.

  You can start by registering to online directories like Yelp, Yellow Pages, etc. You need to provide them with basic information like business name, address, phone number, etc. but remember to keep the information accurate and similar in every directory for better GoogleBot crawling.

Backlinks

If you have more links leading to your website then your domain authority increases and GoogleBot crawler starts to regard it as a trustworthy website, which further helps in climbing up the SERPs.

Nearly 72% Local SEOs build backlinks via online directories and citations.

So, you can begin to include links to your website in those directories.

This helps your Local SEO and marks your website as trustworthy.

  3. Online Reviews Can Enhance Local Search Rankings

13% of the Local search ranking factors are on the basis of reviews attracted by your business.

After registering in Google My Business, users start posting reviews on Google after visiting your store. These reviews are helpful for the other visitors to decide upon the services of your store. It is advisable that business interact with the audience via those reviews.

There are other channels such as Yelp, where visitors write reviews about your store.

When you search for “Best Italian Restaurants in Chicago” you get results like these.

There are several websites which have shortlisted the best Italian restaurants, but how do they do it? The answer for that is Online Reviews.

These websites gauge how good a restaurant might be on the basis of how positive the reviews are. And getting mentioned in those successfully ranked websites drives more links to your domain and increases its credibility, plus people living in Chicago will become much more aware about your business.

4. Create Localised Quality Content

“Content Is King”

  For a local business, creating long form content which focuses on the local events can boost up your Local SEO.

If there’s something occasional in your locality, you can market yourself with your content. You can include offers and discounts which you have decided to provide to your visitors on that joyous occasion. So that, your local business gets ranked in the SERPs and when people search for that event online, they are able to locate your store as well.

With content you can generate more rankings and gain more visibility.

Also, don’t focus on the text alone, you can fill your content with knowledge but without any visuals that content piece will become dull. You need to include images, infographics, videos, after short intervals so that you can grip the audience and engage them with your content.

5. Create Social Profiles

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Now a days, every business should have a social media presence. Users tend to know more about a store through their social media handles, they prefer to see how popular the store is. Plus, they would like to have more options to interact with the store.

Social listening is important for your local business, you get to know what people are saying about your brand, where is it being mentioned, what comments are being made on your posts, etc. This kind of information is necessary to help you prepare better strategies.

But if you are aiming to get ranked and build goodwill with your audiences, you need to begin interacting with them by replying to their comments both negative and positive, thanking them for their feedback, and engaging them with your posts.

  6. On-Page Optimisation

Whatever you have done has no essence if your content, your web page is not SEO optimised.

You need to include relevant keywords in your website’s content, title, meta description, H1 Tag, etc. this helps Google to efficiently crawl your local business’ website and rank it in the SERPs.

If you are new to this field, you can have a look at this On-Page optimisation tutorial for better and detailed understanding.

  7. Voice Search

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In Local Search, voice search is bringing in more searches and engagement. People are preferring voice search to conveniently find solution to their queries without touching their device,

Nearly 44% adults and 55% teens are using voice searches on a daily basis and the number will tentatively increase to 50% by 2020.

With rising use of voice search, Google upgraded voice search to work even more efficiently for Local Search because voice related searches are 3x more likely to be local-based.

So every local business should optimize their voice search.

If you have upgraded your website content with on page optimisation, registered your local business in Google My Business, and in online directories and citations, then the chances for your website getting ranked on the top local SERPs increases.

  8. Mobile Friendly – Mobile first indexing and local search

As Google has released Mobile-First Indexing this year, every webmaster is convicted to making their website more responsive to the mobile and tablet design. So that visitors don’t face any sort of inconvenience.

If you local business’ website is not prepared for mobile first indexing, it is essential that you make your website more mobile friendly because if your visitors are not able to load your website, then they will probably go for your substitutes and might even publish a negative review for your website.

  9. Include Location In Domain Name

If the domain name of your local business includes the location of it then Google will favour it more than the other domains.

For example, if you have a bookstore in Ohio then you can make the domain name as Ohiobookstore.com.

But this will only be effective for local searches, if you are in Delhi and you search for bookstore, you will not see anything related to Ohio making you wish you had registered that Delhibookstore domain name.

That is why most of the local business choose to include their city name or part of it in the domain name.

Closing Thoughts:

Some local marketers think that running a local business means you simply can’t get progressing rankings in the SERPs.

It is understandable that for local businesses getting ranked in the SERPs is hard both generally and when compared to big brands.

But for those big brands, this ranking process is even harder because they have to go for various other SEO techniques like off page and on page optimisation to get their websites ranked. Whereas local businesses have local SEO along with big banners’ on-page and off-page optimization.

Getting ranked is tough. No one really knows the correct algorithm depending on what Google decides to rank a website, SEO experts know parts of it and they are tactically efficient in boosting the chances of getting ranked progressively.

So, coming straight to the point, with these Local SEO tactics mentioned above local businesses can generate traffic to their website and get it ultimately ranked.

This is, however, a time consuming task that requires specified optimisations like content, URL, etc. but once leveraged properly, you will be able to generate ranking for your local business eventually, attracting more customers, generating more leads, more traffic, and increase business’ sales.

  Source: Learn How To Get Your Local Business Ranked in Google Search

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Expanded phrase match negatives: A script for misspellings

As paid search specialists, our strength lies in our ability to exert control over our keyword targeting. Every month or so, there are new threats to this control. We must be strong in battling this pay-per-click (PPC) kryptonite. We must build super automation to help save the world from bad PPC!

That is why we at Brainlabs (my company) have created another Google Ads script, this time to help you control the impact of negative keywords. The challenge with negative keywords is getting the balance right. Too little control, and you’ll include budget-draining mismatches. Too much, and you risk losing out on potential customers. To filter traffic for high- and low-value searches, you need just the right touch.

Getting the hang of it takes a bit of trial and error, but using a script to help you along doesn’t hurt. Today, I’m sharing an awesome script that will boost your phrase negative keyword matching by finding the ones you’re failing to catch due to misspellings.

Using negative keywords

We all know that without the right keyword, your ads won’t be triggered when a user enters a search term. Unlike preplanned keywords, search terms are liable to all sorts of inconsistencies.

Advertising platforms like Google Ads offer different ways to match keywords to search terms: broad, broad match modifier, phrase, and exact. Whichever you prefer to work with, you’ll know that planning ahead for human error can be difficult. Luckily, these match types can deal with close variants like misspellings, plurals, broad match, synonyms and related searches.

The difficulty lies in the use of negative keyword matching. Don’t get me wrong — negative keywords are great! They stop ads from showing for searches containing a specific term, in order to exclude irrelevant searches and filter traffic through appropriate match types. They can also be set at a campaign or ad group level.

Unfortunately, they don’t use close variant or synonym matching. This means even with a well-well-thought-out negative keyword list, your ads might still show on searches that contain close variations of your terms.

If you’re using phrase negative keyword matching, which prevents any search term containing the exact uninterrupted phrase from prompting your ads, you’ll need to be prepared for all eventualities.

One common mistake people make when typing searches: they forget to add a space between words. Not a big deal, right? But when that single character is left out, the searches won’t be blocked by your phrase match negatives!

To help, I have the script you need. It looks at queries that contain a phrase negative but weren’t excluded for this trivial reason. It will then suggest new negative keywords that will exclude those search queries.

How the script works

You enter a phrase which is already a phrase match negative. For example, “free” or “second-hand.”

The script will look through your search query report and find queries which contain that phrase and where the keywords are attached to other words. Using the word “Lego” as an example:

“Lego freesample”

“buysecond-hand Lego toys”.

The script will trim down the queries to make newly suggested negatives like “freesample” or “buysecond-hand.”

The script will then report the performance of queries containing the suggested negatives into a Google sheet, so you can review them and add them as negatives if necessary.

This is shown at both the campaign and account level, so you can decide if you want them as campaign negatives or add them to your shared negative lists.

How to use it

In Google Ads, go to Tools, and in Bulk Actions, choose Scripts.

On the Scripts page, click on the big “+” button and paste in the script (link below). You’ll need to create a Google Spreadsheet for the report to go into and manually edit the following options:

phraseMatchNegative is the negative keyword you want to expand on.

startDate and endDate determine the date range of the data. Enter them in yyyy-mm-dd format.

currencySymbol is used when formatting cost data in the report.

campaignNameContains and campaignNameDoesNotContain filter which campaigns the script gets data from. For example, if campaignNameContains is [“Brand”, “Generic”] then only campaigns with names containing “brand” or “generic” are included. If campaignNameDoesNotContain is [“Display”, “Competitor”] then any campaigns with names containing “display” or “competitor” are ignored.

This is not case-sensitive.

Leave blank, [ ], to include all campaigns.

If you need to put a double quote into campaignNameContains or campaignNameDoesNotContain, put a backslash before it.

ignorePausedCampaigns should be set to true if you only want to look at currently active campaigns, or false if you want to include them.

Similarly, ignorePausedAdGroups should be true to only look at currently active ad groups, and false to include paused ones.

spreadsheetUrl is the URL of a Google Spreadsheet, which the results will be copied into. Create a blank spreadsheet and put the URL in here.

If clearSpreadsheet is true, any data already in the spreadsheet will be overwritten. If it’s false, then the script’s results will be added at the end of the sheets.

You can also pick impression, click, cost and conversion thresholds. Possible negatives will only be shown if they have metrics over these thresholds. This means you can concentrate just on the most common or expensive typos.

Here is the script. Good hunting!

About The Author

Daniel Gilbert is the CEO at Brainlabs, the best paid media agency in the world (self-declared). He has started and invested in a number of big data and technology startups since leaving Google in 2010. Source

The post Expanded phrase match negatives: A script for misspellings appeared first on Gorilla Authority.

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Google’s August 1st Core Update: Week 1

On August 1, Google (via Danny Sullivan’s @searchliaison account) announced that they released a “broad core algorithm update.” Algorithm trackers and webmaster chatter confirmed multiple days of heavy ranking flux, including our own MozCast system:

Temperatures peaked on August 1-2 (both around 114°F), with a 4-day period of sustained rankings flux (purple bars are all over 100°F). While this has settled somewhat, yesterday’s data suggests that we may not be done.

August 2nd set a 2018 record for MozCast at 114.4°F. Keep in mind that, while MozCast was originally tuned to an average temperature of 70°F, 2017-2018 average temperatures have been much higher (closer to 90° in 2018).

Temperatures by Vertical

There’s been speculation that this algo update targeted so called YMYL queries (Your Money or Your Life) and disproportionately impacted health and wellness sites. MozCast is broken up into 20 keyword categories (roughly corresponding to Google Ads categories). Here are the August 2nd temperatures by category:

    At first glance, the “Health” category does appear to be the most impacted. Keywords in that category had a daily average temperature of 124°F. Note, though, that all categories showed temperatures over 100°F on August 1st – this isn’t a situation where one category was blasted and the rest were left untouched. It’s also important to note that this pattern shifted during the other three days of heavy flux, with other categories showing higher average temperatures. The multi-day update impacted a wide range of verticals.

Top 30 winners

So, who were the big winners (so far) of this update? I always hesitate to do a winners/losers analysis – while useful, especially for spotting patterns, there are plenty of pitfalls. First and foremost, a site can gain or lose SERP share for many reasons that have nothing to do with algorithm updates. Second, any winners/losers analysis is only a snapshot in time (and often just one day).

Since we know that this update spanned multiple days, I’ve decided to look at the percentage increase (or decrease) in SERP share between July 31st and August 7th. In this analysis, “Share” is a raw percentage of page-1 rankings in the MozCast 10K data set. I’ve limited this analysis to only sites that had at least 25 rankings across our data set on July 31 (below that the data gets very noisy). Here are the top 30…

    The first column is the percentage increase across the 7 days. The final column is the overall share – this is very low for all but mega-sites (Wikipedia hovers in the colossal 5% range).

Before you over-analyze, note the second column – this is the percent change from the highest July SERP share for that site. What the 7-day share doesn’t tell us is whether the site is naturally volatile. Look at Time.com (#27) for a stark example. Time Magazine saw a +19.5% lift over the 7 days, which sounds great, except that they landed on a final share that was down 54.4% from their highest point in July. As a news site, Time’s rankings are naturally volatile, and it’s unclear whether this has much to do with the algorithm update.

Similarly, LinkedIn, AMC Theaters, OpenTable, World Market, MapQuest, and RE/MAX all show highs in July that were near or above their August 7th peaks. Take their gains with a grain of salt.

Top 30 losers

We can run the same analysis for the sites that lost the most ground. In this case, the “Max %” is calculated against the July low. Again, we want to be mindful of any site where the 7-day drop looks a lot different than the drop from that site’s July low-point…

    Comparing the first two columns, Verywell Health immediately stands out. While the site ended the 7-day period down 52.3%, it was up just over 200% from July lows. It turns out that this site was sitting very low during the first week of July and then saw a jump in SERP share. Interestingly, Verywell Family and Verywell Fit also appear on our top 30 losers list, suggesting that there’s a deeper story here.

Anecdotally, it’s easy to spot a pattern of health and wellness sites in this list, including big players like Prevention and LIVESTRONG. Whether this list represents the entire world of sites hit by the algorithm update is impossible to say, but our data certainly seems to echo what others are seeing.

Are you what you E-A-T?

There’s been some speculation that this update is connected to Google’s recent changes to their Quality Rater Guidelines. While it’s very unlikely that manual ratings based on the new guidelines would drive major ranking shifts (especially so quickly), it’s entirely plausible that the guideline updates and this algorithm update share a common philosophical view of quality and Google’s latest thinking on the subject.

Marie Haynes’ post theorizing the YMYL connection also raises the idea that Google may be looking more closely at E-A-T signals (Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trust). While certainly an interesting theory, I can’t adequately address that question with this data set. Declines in sites like Fortune, IGN and Android Central pose some interesting questions about authoritativeness and trust outside of the health and wellness vertical, but I hesitate to speculate based only on a handful of outliers.

If your site has been impacted in a material way (including significant traffic gains or drops), I’d love to hear more details in the comments section. If you’ve taken losses, try to isolate whether those losses are tied to specific keywords, keyword groups, or pages/content. For now, I’d advise that this update could still be rolling out or being tweaked, and we all need to keep our eyes open.

Source

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How to rev up your page speed for better website performance

Page speed is now a ranking factor on mobile search. That means it’s a critically important component in all of your search engine optimization (SEO) efforts because of its impact on user experience.

According to research conducted by Financial Times, a 1-second slower page results in a 5 percent reduction in reader engagement.

Google states over half of the visits made to mobile sites are abandoned if it takes more than 3 seconds for the screen to load.

The bottom line is simple: Page speed plays a significant role in performance, whether we’re talking about paid or organic search, reader engagement, sales or lead generation.

Fortunately, improving page speed isn’t some arcane and mysterious dark art. You won’t need to brew a special potion, summon demons, or sell your soul. You’ll just need to have a decent understanding of certain technologies and invest some good old-fashioned hard work to bring it all together.

Establish a baseline

The first step is to establish a baseline. By doing that, we can obtain a quantifiable measurement of speed and identify the work we’ll need to do to improve it. Some of the tools I use for this are:

WebPageTest.org.

GTmetrix.com.

Google PageSpeed Insights.

Google PageSpeed Insights

Once you have your tools lined up and a baseline, it’s time to get to work.

Understand how websites work

Most people — including many of those who claim to be developers — lack a proper understanding of how websites really work. That’s why we see so many bloated and inefficient websites today.

We’re at an interesting point in internet history where literally anyone can create a website with just a few clicks. While that comes with certain advantages, it also creates a whole world of new problems.

Think about it like this: If someone knew nothing about architecture, but used software that enabled them to create blueprints for a bridge with just a few clicks, would you feel comfortable driving across that bridge once it was built? I certainly wouldn’t.

That’s because there is a lot more to architecture than our own personal preferences. There are specific structures required to serve specific purposes. There are precise calculations to determine the load-bearing capacity of various components. And there are code and zoning laws to help ensure a building is safe and fits into the local community.

It’s the same thing with websites.

In order to ensure your website loads quickly, you need to understand hypertext markup language (HTML), cascading style sheets (CSS) and JavaScript at a bare minimum. Ideally, you should also have at least a working knowledge of hypertext preprocessor (PHP) and the inner workings of WordPress. Having a good handle on these elements will allow you to dig into the nuts and bolts of a website and fix the things that are slowing it down.

Minimize HTTP requests

Once upon a time, bandwidth was a minuscule fraction of what we enjoy today, so back then, we would compensate by slicing large images into a series of smaller images. Rather than waiting for a single large image to load, visitors would see the image load in chunks.

Today, the bandwidth available through even a basic internet connection is much better. This has led to lazy developers and impatient visitors.

Each hypertext transfer protocol (HTTP) request increases the time it takes for a page to load. Often significantly. In fact, the impact can be so dramatic that a smaller web page with more HTTP requests may actually take longer to fully load than a larger web page with fewer HTTP requests.

How do we reduce the number of HTTP requests our pages make? This is where we roll up our sleeves and start digging into the source code of our website. What we’re looking for here are opportunities to merge or eliminate certain HTTP requests.

CSS and JavaScript files are often the low-hanging fruit here because so many websites have a ton of both. There are three options to handle this:

Consolidate all CSS and JavaScript files into one single CSS file and JavaScript file.

Install a plug-in that mimics this functionality on the front end, while leaving the actual CSS and JavaScript files untouched on the back end.

When possible, delete calls to CSS and JavaScript files completely.

In most cases, you’ll need to use a combination of these options. That’s because if your website is built on WordPress, merging CSS and JavaScript files from plug-ins into a single file could cause problems when one or more of those plug-ins are updated.

Generally, I’ll first identify any CSS and JavaScript files that aren’t needed and remove them. The speed improvement you can make at this stage can be significant because many themes load a lot of unnecessary files. This might include fonts you aren’t using, separate CSS files for color variations and individual JavaScript files for functionality that you aren’t using, to name just a few.

Next, I ensure that all CSS and JavaScript files for that website are merged into a single CSS file and JavaScript file.

Finally, I’ll utilize a plug-in that merges all CSS and JavaScript files — for the theme as well the plug-ins — into a single file when the page is loaded, leaving the actual files untouched in the background.

I recommend using sprites to trim back HTTP requests generated by image files. This won’t work for every image, but it efficiently uses images that are used repeatedly throughout a website. This might include your logo, social media icons and navigational elements.

The idea here is that you put all of these images into a single file, and then use CSS to define the container for that element and appropriately position the image within that container. Now, instead of a dozen or more individual HTTP requests, you can simply make one. How’s that for efficient?

You may also want to consider replacing at least some of those images with a web font like FontAwesome.com, which gives you a lot more flexibility with the same or smaller file size.

If you go that route, you should download the necessary files and host them locally rather than remotely. Calls to external files can have a dramatic and detrimental effect on page speed. I’ve seen differences as large as one second or more when a website loads a file from an external source.

Go easy on the plug-ins

Plug-ins are some of the things that make WordPress awesome. They’re also some of the things that can make it terrible because they could be poorly programmed, resulting in poor performance. They also often load several CSS, JavaScript and image files, even those already loaded, such as JQuery.

This can get real messy real quick.

Each plug-in, no matter how lightweight, will place a load on your server when it serves a web page. Add up a few and the difference is noticeable, and that’s before we even talk about the CSS, JavaScript and image files it may need to load.

Here’s the problem: adding plug-ins often starts small but quickly evolves into an uncontrollable monster because web designers presenting themselves as web developers don’t know how to program the functionality they need. So they add one plug-in here and another there, and before you know it, there are dozens humming along behind the scenes.

I was involved in a project where an agency wanted to use their “developer,” who was really nothing more than a guy who installed plug-ins. To achieve the functionality the client wanted, the “developer” ended up installing 46 plug-ins! As you can imagine, the website slowed to a crawl, and since the “developer” didn’t know how to program and relied on the plug-ins, he hardcoded a warning within the admin area for the client not to update the plug-ins.

What a mess.

I recommend either investing the time to learn PHP and JavaScript or hiring a real developer who can build the functionality you need without a lot of bloated extras that will slow down a website.

Ditch the discount web hosting

We all want to save money, but your web hosting is not where you want to cut corners. It’s not a commodity. There’s a tremendous difference between that $10 a month hosting package from a bottom-end web host and a $30 a month hosting package from a higher-end web host like WP Engine.

Cheap web hosting is cheap for a reason.

Bargain hosting packages are not built for performance, they simply cram as many websites as they can onto each server and don’t optimize for speed. As a result, your website will load painfully slowly.

I’ve had this conversation with many clients, and often, their response is something to the effect of “Well, it loads quickly for me.”

Here’s the thing: it really doesn’t.

Most people have an unconscious bias toward their own website because they have an emotional attachment to it. They overlook its flaws because it’s theirs. Sort of like a parent who is not bothered by their children screaming at a restaurant while most of the other guests are.

But don’t take my word for it, there are several tools you can use to test the actual speed of a website.

A few years ago, I started making web hosting a top priority to help my clients achieve faster loading web pages. A friend recommended one of the specialized WordPress hosting companies, and I decided to give it a try.

I was floored in the very best way. Up until that point, I had always used bargain web hosting and tried to optimize for speed using caching plug-ins. But a WordPress hosting company operates specifically to serve WordPress at blazingly high speeds and is well worth the investment. I was seeing a 40 percent increase in speed even before caching and other fine tunings.

Invest in robust, high-quality web hosting and put in the same fine-tuning for speed that you ordinarily would. You’ll achieve a dramatic improvement over most, if not all of your competitors.

Leverage minification, caching and a CDN

Once you’ve gone through all my previous steps and have gotten to this point, you are ready to fine-tune. Your next steps can still create significant improvements, but you should expect a bit of trial and error as you move forward.

Minification. Minification is the process of stripping out unnecessary characters from CSS and JavaScript files. This includes white space, comments and trailing semicolons. The goal here is to make the files smaller.

This one might be tricky because it often breaks a website, so you’ll need to experiment to see how aggressive you can be and which files you can include.

You can manually process the files, but I prefer to use a plug-in that does this on the fly so that my files remain easily readable. It makes editing them a lot easier. Depending on your web host, this may already be built into their system.

Caching. Caching dramatically improves page speed because it saves dynamically generated HTML files and serves them from the cache (i.e., reusing previously generated data) each time a request is made, rather than running all of the PHP scripts from WordPress every time a page is loaded.

Caching, like minification, can be tricky because certain settings may break your website, so expect to face some trial and error here, too.

You have two options here:

If you’re still using bargain web hosting, you can use a plug-in like W3 Total Cache, WP-Rocket.me, or WP Super Cache.

If you’re using a web host optimized for WordPress, they probably already have caching built into their system.

Content delivery network. A content delivery network (CDN) hosts multiple copies of your files (HTML, CSS, JavaScript, images, fonts and so on) on different servers all over the world so that rather than visitors downloading them directly from your server, they download them from one that is closer to them. This results in a dramatically faster download.

There are both free and paid options available, and you’ll have to evaluate what they offer compared to your needs.

I recommend visiting HTML-CSS-JS.com to find solid HTML, CSS and JS tools plus editors, code optimizers and more.

Speed is critical to your success

Improving page speed isn’t some mystical process, but it is highly important for SEO, user experience, and conversions. Invest the time to learn how to improve your page speed or hire a professional to help you. Doing so will help boost your profits, your rankings and customer retention.

About The Author

Jeremy Knauff is the founder of Spartan Media, a digital marketing agency in Tampa, Florida. He’s also a proud father, husband, and US Marine Corps veteran. After 18 years in the digital marketing industry, he’s learned a thing or two, and today, while still serving his clients, he’s working to share his knowledge with the industry to help even more people. Source

The post How to rev up your page speed for better website performance appeared first on Gorilla Authority.

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5 local SEO myths and misconceptions that Will. Not. Die.

Whenever I speak at a conference, there are a number of local search engine optimization (SEO) questions I always get. Like a bad penny, certain topics seem to always come up, and with them, misconceptions about their use.

I’m not really sure why these issues keep coming up, but they do, so I’m going to list the top five misconceptions I hear about repeatedly and explain why they simply are not right.

Myth 1: Suite numbers are a ranking factor

It is surprising how often the topic of suite numbers comes up; it’s been rolling around for years.

People who rent an office or share a space with another business often wonder if having the suite number in their published address will give them a unique NAP (name, address, phone number) listing. They believe by adding the suite number it will somehow make their address stand out and be more visible.

This is not the case. Google often ignores suite numbers and doesn’t use them for anything other than a visual aid. I would continue using suite numbers so your customers have an easy way to find you, but they do not provide any kind of ranking boost.

It also won’t help you to make up a suite number if you don’t have one and add it to your NAP. Sometimes people will ask me if they should list themselves at 123A Main Street when there is no suite A in existence. This can actually backfire and cause Google to remove your listing, thinking you are spoofing a fake address. I see people reporting bad addresses all the time on the GMB (Google My Business) forum. It’s spam, and Google deals harshly with spam.

Myth 2: Break any Google guideline and your ranking will be penalized

If you break the Google My Business guidelines, one of two things could happen. First, you could get a soft suspension, which means you will no longer have the ability to manage your local business via Google My Business. This is a big problem because you will no longer receive notifications about your listing, be able to use Google Posts or respond to reviews.

These are all negatives, but the ranking of your listing will remain unaffected.

Second, you could get a hard suspension. This is more serious, since it means Google removes your entire local business listing. Images, reviews, maps — all of it will be taken down. Since the listing doesn’t exist, you won’t rank anywhere in the local results. Ouch!

What does not exist is some type of algorithmic method Google uses to diminish the ranking of listings that violate their guidelines. Google does this for organic search (manual penalties), but not for the local results. Unlike Google, Yelp does penalize the ranking of business listings that break their guidelines.

Myth 3: Your service area impacts where you rank

Google allows business owners to set the service area for their listing inside the Google My Business dashboard. This is a visual indicator of how far you are willing to travel to service customers.

People often think the information they put in this section will influence how and where they rank on Google. It does not.

If I say I service 15 cities, it will not impact my ranking in any of those cities. What locations you rank in are mainly based on the location of your address (what city you’re located in), along with the city the user is searching from.

Myth 4: Using a call tracking number will hurt rankings

Using a call tracking number will not hurt how your listing ranks if you move your “normal or regular” phone number to the additional phone line in Google My Business.

Doing this allows Google to see you are the same business and will avoid issues like duplicate listings.

We have been doing this for all our accounts for almost a year and have never experienced any type of ranking drop as a result. What you should avoid is putting call tracking numbers on third-party directories. Google can have issues consolidating those.

Myth 5: You should consult with Google My Business support about your ranking issues

Google My Business has a support team available on Twitter, Facebook, their online forum, phone, chat and email. Access to this service is incredibly helpful and is usually the first place we start if we have an issue with features in Google My Business.

Notice I said “features” and not ranking issues. The people who answer the GMB support lines are not SEO experts and often don’t know how the algorithm works. They are not the same team as the actual engineers who work on the algorithm; they are GMB experts, so asking them about ranking issues won’t help you much.

To close

Did any of this surprise you? I hear it all the time, and it still surprises me! It’s best not to spend time trying to use some of these shortcuts or tactics. They really won’t help you. Fine-tune your listings so customers land on your local pages and not someone else’s.

About The Author

Joy Hawkins is a Local SEO expert who is a Google My Business Top Contributor. She regularly contributes to many online communities in the Local SEO world, including the Google My Business forum (Top Contributor), the Local Search Forum (Top Contributor), and the Local University Forum (Moderator). She is also a contributor to the Moz Local Search Ranking Factors survey. Joy is the owner of Sterling Sky in Canada and is the author of the Expert’s Guide to Local SEO, which is an advanced training manual for people wanting a detailed look at what it takes to succeed in the Local SEO space.

Source

The post 5 local SEO myths and misconceptions that Will. Not. Die. appeared first on Gorilla Authority.

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Structuring paid search campaigns: Segmentation vs. aggregation

Structuring paid search campaigns can be an iterative and subjective process, and the path to an “ideal” structure is often paved by best practices and tactical preference.

The ultimate goal, however, is achieving a structure that allows for optimal end-user experience while rapidly gathering sufficient data to make informed, efficient optimizations at scale.

Marketers have a myriad of levers and automation options to help drive customization, but finding the sweet spot of granularity and data volume can be tricky. Read on to learn how finding the “right” campaign structure for your pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns can transform levels of segmentation.

Pitfalls of over-segmentation

There is no doubt highly segmented accounts allow for the most detailed targeting. Bid modifiers and ads are only a few areas that benefit from segmentation. The most segmented accounts allow an individual search term to be mapped to a specific ad, with specific bid modifiers and settings all tailored around that user search.

That being said, over-segmentation can easily occur when keywords and other account assets cannot collect a significant amount of data within a reasonable time frame. Slow or inconsistent data aggregation begets longer optimization cycles, and slower (or less informed) business decisions, causing disadvantages in competitive, seasonal or volatile spaces.

Account structure

The highest level structure starts at the account level. Most small to mid-sized companies can do fine with a single account that holds all campaigns. Larger companies often find themselves needing many accounts and My Client Centers (MCCs).

The primary reason to have multiple accounts is really about business factors, such as billing. There can also be many subdivisions or products within a business with completely different stakeholders that could call for separate accounts.

My Client Center

In most situations, it can actually be ideal to have one account. The benefits to one account are ease of management and the aggregation of data for ease of reporting.

Campaign structure

A buttoned-up account structure probably won’t make or break performance. That said, an optimized campaign structure can significantly impact results. Before jumping into the details of campaign-level optimizations, it’s important to first establish the minimum amount of segmentation required.

Most paid search accounts have established goals and budgets, and it’s logical to align the two.

For example, if Product X has a cost-per-action (CPA) goal of $10 and Product Y has a CPA goal of $45, it makes sense to give these products separate budgets. Otherwise, all of the funds would be spent on the product that is more efficient.

Under each goal and budget, there will need to be separate campaigns. Having one campaign that has keywords for multiple budgets would make budget pacing and reporting really tough. Generally, a minimum level of segmentation would be a single campaign for each budget. If branded paid search is in this mix, it likely makes sense to establish that as a mandatory split as well.

Minimum level segmentation is important because as we take a more data-driven approach to segmentation, we want to have an established floor to avoid consolidating campaigns too much. With a floor established, we can look at the benefits of campaign-level segmentation:

Bid modifiers.

Settings.

Labels.

Targeting.

Shared library.

All of these campaign-level features allow for organization and scale. The next level down for campaign targeting would be targeting splits, such as locations. Once all mandatory splits have happened, it boils down to the amount of data we can collect.

Oversegmenting beyond mandatory splits can seem like a good idea because keyword sets will have more specific campaign-level settings and budgets. However, we may not be able to fully optimize these campaigns since they won’t collect enough data.

There are a few ways to determine the right level of data to justify keeping a campaign segmented out. The most straightforward split would be to look at X number of clicks or X number of conversions. Focusing on clicks can help account for differences in conversion rates on certain products.

Since optimizing on the conversion is important for most advertisers, one could use the number of clicks it would take to receive X conversions based on the average conversion rate.

Common thresholds are 500 clicks, 15 conversions or 30 conversions over a 30-day time period, for example. If there are campaigns present possessing Ad group structure

Within every campaign falls one or multiple ad groups. Ad groups contain a variety of settings, similar to campaign-level, but have the ability to distribute data to ads and set bids for keywords. Finding the right balance of data and segmentation is important on the ad group level, as this is where the most optimization levels can be pulled.

Single keyword ad groups (SKAGS) are common in many accounts. The reason being that SKAGS are generally quality-score-driven. A keyword in its own ad group helps ensure the user’s search is completely in line with the ad, landing page and ad extensions.

The downfall to SKAGs is that most keywords cannot collect enough data on their own to capitalize on all of the optimizations available at the ad group level. Advertisers often fall into a place where they don’t have enough data to optimize at the campaign level, but global optimizations at the campaign level don’t make sense for all of the individual keywords and ad groups within.

If the account has quality-score problems or extremely high budgets and volume for certain keywords, SKAGS can be a great approach. Conversely, if traffic is normal and quality score is fine, it may be time to look to consolidated ad groups.

A logically consolidated ad group will allow the data to capitalize on three primary features:

Ad group level settings.

Ad copy and extensions.

Bids.

If an ad group has enough data, specific device and audience bid modifiers can be set. This is more impactful than at the campaign level since the ad group is a tighter set of keywords that likely have a more similar performance to one another than cross-campaign keywords.

In addition, specific flexible reach can be set in each ad group for audiences (targeting vs. observation) which can improve audience targeting strategy.

Ad copy and extensions are among of the most important areas of optimization, as this is one of the only things the end user actually sees. Consolidated ad groups allow for the collection of more data on ads, which allows for more accurate and efficient optimizations.

Ad rotation is another consideration, even though Google has pared down ad rotation to two settings. The “optimize” setting will work better with more data on the ads.

Generally speaking, algorithms and other models work better with larger datasets. Consolidation may eliminate some flexibility that advertisers have from a creative perspective, but oftentimes, providing a series of ads for the search platform algorithms to choose from will be nearly as effective as individual ads within SKAGS.

The last major benefit to consolidated ad groups is bidding. In many accounts, the majority of the volume is driven through a few high-volume keywords.

For optimal efficiency, accounts should have a wide range of long-tail keywords to offset the highest-volume, most competitive keywords. Calculating bids on high-volume keywords to achieve the desired outcome is relatively straightforward and real-time.

Setting bids for long-tailed keywords, however, can be difficult, and it can be common for advertisers to overbid across a wide range of keywords. Having aggregate ad group data among similar keyword sets will allow bid calculation using ad-group level data.

Conclusion

While there is no “campaign structure to rule them all,” regularly auditing search accounts to assess the need for segmentation or aggregation will bring value to marketing programs and internal efficiency alike.

About The Author

Megan Taggart leads integrated and radically targeted (+ retargeted) strategies across search, social, display, and eComm platforms for a variety of B2B and B2C clients. From bootstrapped startups to iconic international brands, she thrives in various verticals and marketing funnel types to create connections between Search and Social paid efforts that impact business results. Megan is the Director of Account Management at Aimclear.

Source

The post Structuring paid search campaigns: Segmentation vs. aggregation appeared first on Gorilla Authority.

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