Penguin 2.0 is Coming!

You may have already heard on the grapevine that another Google update is imminent. Matt Cutts, Google’s head of web spam, has announced that they are close to deploying the next generation of Penguin, to be known as Penguin 2.0. This update is going to be more comprehensive and have more of an aggressive impact on spam than the first release.

As well as the Penguin 2.0 update, Google has announced changes combating black hat web spam from many different angles in a variety of areas. Here are some more SEO changes we are likely to see:

Advertorials

Google is clamping down on the use of advertorials on large publications which are used to pass PageRank. Interflora, is an example of a UK company which was penalised for using advertorials that violated Google’s quality guidelines. To make sure you avoid this, if you use advertorials they shouldn’t flow PageRank and there should be clear disclosure so that users realise that the content is paid and is not organic or editorial.

Authority

Google have also advised that they are looking for authors that have high authority in a given subject. If you’re talking about your specialist subject and adding relevant content to your website you’re more likely to rank higher in Google.

Panda Sympathy

If your website was hit by Panda (the quality content update) Google has advised they’re trying to find additional signals to help refine the process for sites that are on the border line (in the grey area) so they can try and soften the effects of the next Panda update on these websites.

Webmaster Communication

Google are continuing to work on hacked sites to detect them better. They’re also trying to improve communication to webmasters by providing a one stop shop where when someone realises they’ve been hacked they can go to one place and obtain a lot more information to point them in the right direction to clean up their hacked site.

So what does this all mean for you?

Google is trying to improve the search results by awarding the good sites and hurting the spammers and black hats in the search results. So if you’re already creating high authority content then these latest updates shouldn’t be a massive surprise and you shouldn’t have to worry that your rankings will fluctuate.

Ultimately, you should be focused on making a compelling website; which publishes relevant, informative and interesting content that your users love, that they’ll tell their friends about, bookmark, and visit over and over again.

The post What to expect from Google and SEO in the coming months appeared first on Steak news and blog.

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Source: YouGov Tablet Tracker http://yougov.co.uk/news/2013/04/18/quality-android-tablets/

This sort of decline is no surprise; it’s rare in consumer electronics history for a manufacturer to popularise and dominate a category as successfully as Apple has. Competitors introduce products to compete directly (like Samsung’s Galaxy range) or target profitable niches of demand – like a lower price point, as met by the Nexus and Tab. Others extend their existing product range into the category, seeking to compete, defend their existing core sales (of services and content, not just devices) and cross-sell to a loyal user base – think Amazon and the Kindle Fire.

But what does the growth of the Marketshare of non iOS devices mean to marketers?

Six months ago I would have looked at what targeting Google offered in AdWords, and suggested the following: marketers with sites that did not work correctly for individual tablets, or with propositions they simply did not feel would convert into sales via a tablet should opt-out (laying aside multi-device attribution consumer journeys and attribution for a moment).

Soon, there will be no opt out. July 22nd is the hard switch over to Enhanced Campaigns in AdWords; no opt out will be possible. We’re already migrating campaigns to be ready ahead of this date. Brands will pay after July for tablet traffic regardless of whether their site works properly on a tablet or they achieve a positive return via this device type. Whilst Google promised cross-device reporting at the launch of Enhanced Campaigns, to enabling marketers to quantify how tablet traffic support sales that actually occurred on other devices, that is not scheduled to launch in July. It won’t be relevant if the site in question offers a poor consumer experience to begin with. The consumer journey with that brand is likely to end at the tablet, not be enhanced by it.

So now is the time to test your site (again) on tablets. The above market share figures provide an indication of what to test beyond the iPad – and remember to test the smaller iPad Mini as well as it’s bigger brethren – but look at your web analytics, too. Which devices have been used to access your site in Q1?

Here’s some of the high level considerations we make when designing sites and content for different tablets:

Processor Power:

The iPad has a powerful processor that can handle animation and browser-based games relatively well; by comparison older Samsung Tabs might struggle as they have lower power processors. This directly impacts the design of the site or app – for example the use (or not) of effects like animated hover states and sliding transitions which might look slick on a powerful device, and terrible (if not irritating to the consumer) on a slower device.

Screen Size:

The aspect ratios of different design need to be taken into account – as does pixel density. Designing for high-res-devices like the iPad Retina or high-end Galaxy tabs requires the designer to design at a much higher resolution in Photoshop and requires the front-end developer create two sets of assets, one set at the high-resolution ad another set for ‘normal’ resolution for other tablets. This needs factoring into project planning, costing and the actual design work.

Browser Rendering Engines:

Even though many tablet default browsers are built on the Webkit rendering engine, they still have their differences in how they display sites and how a user can interact with certain elements – so again, research, planning and testing are required.

These are just some examples of the challenges the growth of non-Apple tablets present designers and marketers. Ultimately sites (and apps) need to work across devices and achieve their targets, be they converting visitors into customers or causing an audience to engage content – so now is the time to test your site again, and not just on the iPad.

Thank you to Ben in our content team for his help with this post.

The post Samsung Tablets at 10% UK Marketshare: Time to Test Your Site appeared first on Steak news and blog.

Panda, introduced two years ago in February 2011, penalized sites built using low quality, scraped and poorly structured content. Initially called “the farmer update”, it was designed to target the sites that had managed to rank for terms using very poor content, which were often also laden with adverts mid-text and deviously served pop-unders. It worked to an extent, but Google knew they had to target the links that came with it, and so in April 2012 Penguin – and the associated penalties – appeared for “unnatural links pointing to your site”.

Pre-Penguin, a raft of off-site link building techniques existed, ranging from the outright manipulation of linking signals to the grayer  murkier area of Google’s quality guidelines and allowed SEOs and agencies to operate as an independent channel with all necessary activity involved in running the account ‘under one roof’. Links could be built or bought in volume, while rankings, visibility and traffic increased and the SEOs didn’t have to disturb anyone in other departments.

But in the post-Penguin online space, it’s not so simple.

Gone are the days of mass link buying and manipulation. Google has penalized many of the sites taking part in this kind of activity and worked to level the playing field. In order to generate the authority signals Google is looking for, what once would have been a narrow channel-based view of SEO, now has to encompass a range of online marketing activity from content production, through creative advertising on to web-based PR techniques.

But SEOs haven’t always been great at this.

The key to success is a return to first-order marketing principles and the creation of value for consumers; we need to move away from content creation focused on gaming search signal metrics and a move towards content created for users. Rather than a myopic focus on the tangible outcome-metrics – such as number of shares, links and comments – at briefing and planning stage we need to be better at knowing what really drives those actions: are we creating content and distributing news which is good enough to get a response from a real, human audience?

People from within the SEO industry have always spoken about having “great content”, but getting an accurate definition has been hard to pin down. Content is more than just writing a blog about the latest industry trend, because who wants to read, link to or share a post on the latest EU gender directive that’s affecting an industry (apart from a few people in that industry)? Marketers need to be more ambitious and show more imagination than that; are we solving a problem for our customers, are we producing work which surprises and delights them, is our output better than yet more landfill content?

This is a deceptively fundamental shift, and one not every agency nor every SEO Manager or Strategist is capable of making, certainly not without education. Just take a look at the content the SEO industry has been churning out for the past few years – “Top Five Tips For Walking” and “What Strictly Come Dancing Taught Me About Balance Transfer Cards” – to understand the change required. A complete change in the content production thought process was (and is) required, taking the emphasis from “what can we produce at volume?” to “what do our customers want to actually see?”

That’s not to say that all SEOs are (or should be) in charge of content, but they must be involved, as do the other disciplines. True visibility of a brand in the digital space has matured into a broader concept. An engaging and useful social presence, utilizing rich and engaging content combined with a strong product offering and on-site experience is a culmination of channels combining to create a greater experience. In order for this to happen, digital in general needs to embrace SEO as a factor in all its activity, and SEO needs to embrace the mechanics of marketing, advertising and selling to customers in different buying contexts.

This is all good news for digital agencies and brands and marketers, but it does mean a lot of change client-side and agency-side. Digital must be viewed in the round, rather than as separate channels, if brands are to effectively use a space which is only going to be become more fundamental to people’s lives and purchasing habits. After all, when we look for the work that displays the greatest volume of the signals that we, as SEO practitioners, seek, we frequently find it outside the SEO channel as social and creative teams embrace content as a means to engage consumers and build brands. How are we as performance marketers going to super-charge this activity and move toward a kind of ‘optimized branding’ which reflects the most effective communications online?

The huge advantage SEO agencies and practitioners have as the industry wrestles with these new forms is in the insight, monitoring and tracking of online activity and our understanding of the structural realities that lie beneath the surface level of online interaction. The digital industry is acutely aware of the differences in audience engagement above and below the line, so the insight and data driven approach can be seen as a massive advantage.  This ‘engineering’ level, and the technical capacity to understand, work within and account for it in planning and deploying digital marketing is an offering not always mirrored in more ‘traditional’ creative digital marketing services.

Adding that seamlessly to strong idea-based content, marketing, social-media and online PR activity will be something of a true advance in online communications and commerce. Agencies who have spent the last year struggling with change should be optimistic about the opportunity this offers, provided they are bold enough to adopt new thinking, adapt their processes and bring in the diverse talent necessary to capitalise on it.

The post Content, and the Future of Search appeared first on Steak news and blog.

How will this impact budgets and performance?

This is the big question. How will these changes affect SEM figures for advertisers?

In January 2013, across our retail clients, we saw on average:

• 28% of non-brand SEM media spend go on PLAs
• 31% of non-brand SEM sales come through PLAs

This vertical is already reliant on these ads for a significant proportion of conversions and the coming changes will only increase this further.

Estimates from Google as to the additional cost have been, to say the least, varied and quite extreme. For different months in 2013 we have been quoted an additional cost ranging between 30 – 90% of 2012 AdWords spend – that’s not PLA spend but total AdWords spend. While the uplift in PLA activity is to some degree backed-up by research from the US market we would take these Google estimates with a pinch of salt. Yes, increased dependency will force CPCs up over time and the more prominent position will encourage clicks but an additional 90% on top of existing budgets does seem somewhat ambitious even by Google’s standards.

For advertisers with an established PLA presence these changes do offer a great opportunity though. These ads have proven since their launch to drive high-value traffic and if Google are to push further developments once the paid-for version is rolled out, then all the better.

Performance of existing SEM activity should also be monitored. The rise of PLA advertisers will, for the first time, be double serving – there is nothing stopping both a PLA and a traditional text ad appearing for the same search term. As such your CTR will decline as you receive 2 (or more) impressions but can only receive 1 click at best.

What should advertisers be doing to address these changes?

1. Ensure you have a Merchant Centre account and you’ve set up PLAs campaigns within AdWords.
2. You absolutely must be able to accurately track this activity. Make sure your tracking solution can support PLAs – as with any digital marketing campaign, these will require regular monitoring, analysis and optimisation.
3. Review the quality of your feed going in the Merchant Centre. Shopping results will now have more stringent criteria to match those of PLAs. Ads will stop showing for shopping results if these are not met – cutting off your sales.
4. Have some flexibility in your budgets. Even with lessons learnt from the US roll out there are still many unknowns around the expected increases in SEM spend. Don’t sacrifice the established AdWords text ads to absorb PLA activity if possible.
5. Advertisers with the most advanced feeds will be best placed to take advance of the changes to shopping. See if your SEM agency has the skill set to manage this directly. Revisit what management solutions are on the market if you feel you’re lacking in this area.
6. Your blend of SEO and SEM traffic will inherently change. This needs to be reflected in targets and strategy.
7. Educate your colleagues as to the changes. There may be some notable shifts in performance coming through the search channels.

By Google’s own admission, the PLA and shopping functionality is still in its comparative infancy, much like the AdWords platform 5 years ago – and think of all the advances in this time-span. PLAs look to be one of the first major steps by the search giant towards creating richer user experiences and engagement directly on the results pages.

As a user I’m hoping that these changes will allow for a truly advanced shopping function that lets me find what I want to buy.

As an SEM expert at STEAK, I’m looking forward to learning more about optimising this traffic source to maximise returns for our clients – and seeing how Google develop tools to help us achieve that aim. SEM never stops changing – and with Enhanced Campaigns also launching, it’s already shaping up to be a busy year of learning, training and testing.

The post SEM Briefing: Google Shopping, PLAs and AdWords Part 2 appeared first on Steak news and blog.

Users of Google in the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Japan, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands, Brazil, Australia, Switzerland and the Czech Republic may have noticed changes to the presentation of the search results when searching for physical products. For retailers, these apparently limited visual changes mark a significant shift in their search budgets and, potentially, campaign performance.

In mid-February Google started the monetization of areas of Google Shopping that historically retailers listed their products in for free. Based around the existing AdWords Product Listing Ads format, this traffic will now operate on a CPC (cost per click) model. US retailers have been adjusting to them for some time now – but for the rest of us, this is a new step in the evolution of SEM.

So what is actually changing and what impact can we expect for advertisers? I am going to discuss the changes, and their implications, over two blog posts.

What do the changes look like to consumers?

Let’s start with the shopping tab itself. At present in the UK we have the following segments (and I do apologize here and now to the color intolerant or blind):

• Normal AdWords ads
• Natural search product listings from advertisers’ Google Merchant Centre
• Delivery options
• Category options
• Price ranges
• Popular brands (e.g. Hawes and Curtis or Ted Baker)
• Popular resellers (e.g. Debenhams or John Lewis)

In a similar fashion to the results on the search tab, products are freely listed and enjoy a prominent position. Users are also offered rudimentary filtering options to refine their searches further.  Here are screenshots of UK results before the change, US results after the change (where this change went live stateside first).

Before and After – Google UK Shopping tab results                                                                                                                                                    

So what are the differences? Visibly, and as far as consumers are concerned, the main results appear very similar. But these are now obviously paid results (as per Google’s FTC-mandated note in the top right of the screen).

What about the quality of results? It’s hard to gauge individual reactions (everyone will have their own preference for the style of imagines served) but if these results are based on the tried and tested AdWords logic of relevance, CPC bid and CTR, then we should assume that a certain imagine style will prove to be the strongest over time.

We’ve also lost the standard AdWords ads at the top of the page (they do still appear at the bottom but the clear aim from Google is to drive clicks to the PLAs).

Most notably though is the inclusion of a far more advanced filtering mechanism.

• In stock nearby: further evidence that Google are incorporating locality into their results, recognizing that for a vertical such as retail research-online-purchase-offline (ROPO) and in-store price comparison is playing an ever-increasing role.
• Colour: an obvious addition for retail, this should improve CTR and CTS as users will see more relevant listings and then also land on more relevant pages once on site.
• Silhouette: basically the product style. Again, by allowing the user to pre-filter results advertisers should be hoping for increased CTR and CTS.

I would also be surprised if additional feed-level information was not incorporated into the shopping results soon:

• Gender
• Size
• Material (e.g. wool, cotton)
• Stock levels (e.g. over 100, under 10)

So that’s the shopping tab but what will the main search results look like? This will have a far greater impact in overall SEM performance due to the larger volume of traffic.

Google have been using the example of “tents” so I’ll stick with this to review the main search tabs for Google US and Google UK.

Google UK results (with “old style” free listing ads; now a thing of the past) and Google US results (no free product listings):

The differences are clear.

• Natural search will no longer pull through relevant product listings from the Shopping tab.
• AdWords PLAs take a more prominent position.
• The format of the PLAs has also altered.
• The number of listings has gone from 6 to 5.

Over the coming months I would expect this area of the search results will undergo a large amount of testing as Google experiment with the styles that drive the greatest level of engagement (as well as media spend for themselves).

In the second part of this, I will discuss how this impacts campaigns and brands.

The post SEM Briefing: Google Shopping, PLAs and AdWords Part 1 appeared first on Steak news and blog.

Why are Google making these changes? 

In our opinion, these changes can potentially enable campaigns to be opted-in for any new device types – like Smart TVs or Google Goggles –that emerge in the future as significant in terms of search volume. Google invested considerable time and money in convincing advertisers to setup mobile SEM campaigns; for future platforms, they will not have to make that investment – opting out will simply not be possible.
What are Google Changing? 
Google are fundamentally changing the way campaigns are setup and targeted with the launch of Enhanced Campaigns.
Device Targeting and Bidding Changes 
Advertisers and agencies will no longer be able to create campaigns separately to target mobile, tablets and desktop computers. Instead, all campaigns will target all three devices types as one.
Tablet and normal desktop computers will be treated as the same device type going forward; there will be no way of opting out of traffic from tablets. Keyword-level bidding will continue, including match-type specific bids.
However, keyword-level bidding for mobile traffic will be removed – instead, campaign-level bids can be set for mobile traffic as a percentage increase or decrease based upon “normal” keyword level bids. If an advertiser does not want mobile traffic, there is no opt out – but bids can be set to decrease 100% for mobile traffic, effectively removing that ad from the auction for the limited space on a mobile. This will not however prevent mobile clicks if there are few advertisers in the auction – for example on some obscure long tail keywords.
This does have the advantage of reducing the workload involved in the replication and on-going management of keywords and ad groups in campaigns; but it will also remove a level of granular control and flexibility. This will be especially significant for advertisers who do not want to receive mobile or tablet traffic due to site performance issues or the performance of this traffic against metrics.
Other targeting functionality that is being removed includes targeting ads based upon connection type (e.g. Wi-Fi or 3G) or operating system (e.g. Apple or Android) for search. These options will remain for the Google Display Network.
Budget Control 
Reflecting the above changes, budgets can no longer be set per device type by utilizing separate campaigns. Spend levels will need to be managed through bid strategies and campaign targeting options, which will provide less accurate control. This is an unavoidable result of these changes.
Mobile-Specific Copy and Landing Pages 
Advertisers will still be able to specify copy, ad extensions and landing pages for mobile devices in the revised system. These options further underline the need for advertisers to optimize their site across various devices and have a well thought out mobile strategy.
New Features and Enhancements 
In addition, Google are introducing new features which will offer additional targeting and scheduling functionality. These new features include:
The ability to schedule Ad Extensions to activate and deactivate (for example to deactivate call extensions when call centers are closed);

Enhanced sitelink options, allowing for management and customization of individual sitelinks at campaign and ad group levels;
Enhanced reporting on sitelinks to an individual link level, providing valuable additional data for optimizations;
Combined bidding rules spanning time, device type and location to create powerful bidding profiles to target segments of consumers. For instance, raising bids for all mobile phone users close to a retail store to encourage footfall during a sales event.
Multi-Device Attribution and Offline Conversion Tracking 
Two of the most significant announcements are the addition of cross-device reporting and attribution. For many brands, measuring the relationship between search expenditure and in store conversion is a challenge. For others, measuring the behavior of consumers across devices and how each platform supports the final sale is an equal challenge. The promise of digital has always been transparency on the performance of advertising spend. Google’s new approach of a multi-device, connected world is designed to bring this a step closer.
Whilst Google aren’t releasing details of how this will be achieved, we suspect multi-device reporting and attribution will be based on consumers remaining logged in across devices – driven by the use of Gmail, Google Maps, Documents or other non-search Google products.
In the retail space, Google has experimented with a variety of betas and field trials to help retailers understand how search spend drives foot traffic – for example through the use of couponing and the growth of Google Wallet on some devices.
Whilst the details of how these two features will work have not been released – they won’t be available for the launch – they could be very significant for many, if not most, brands. These features could add a significant data set to campaign optimization, planning and strategy that will positively impact budget allocation and significantly, ROI.
When will Enhanced Campaigns launch? 
Enhanced campaigns launch this week, with a roll out over the following weeks – and we do not expect all functionality to be available on day one.
There will be a six-month grace period from today for advertisers to convert their campaigns to this new format; during that period, existing campaigns will function as normal and new campaigns can be created on the existing or new Enhanced Campaign type.
What about Third-Party Tools and AdWords Editor? 
Google has already briefed many of the third-party tool providers, and have stated that they will release updates to the AdWords API more quickly than they have after previous feature announcements. This should assist tool providers in developing and deploying changes to their systems to reflect those in AdWords – but that will take time. Campaigns should only be migrated to Enhanced Campaigns when tool providers are ready; close co-operation will be key.
Google has communicated AdWords Editor will be updated soon after the announcement.
What About Quality Score and other Campaign Settings? 
Neither Quality Score nor other campaign settings not mentioned above are changing at this time.
How Will Reporting Change? 
Google has told us that reporting to device type level will remain and additional data about individual sitelink performance will be added. Report layouts, however, will inevitably change.
What will the Actual Impact be on Campaigns? 
We predict an increase in mobile CPCs as more advertisers enter this auction; and the ROI of tablet device traffic will potentially decline as this traffic moves to cost the same as desktop traffic.
Brands that have been slow to adapt their website to function on mobile and tablet devices may bring their plans forward; they can no longer delay the investment – Google is forcing their hand; a bad site experience, whether it’s on a mobile or otherwise, reflects negatively on the brand overall in the consumer’s eyes.
All campaign structures will have to be changed, and campaigns duplicated across devices merged – Google are going to provide tools in March to assist with this.
Close attention will need to be given to the structure of campaigns to reflect keyword performance so that different keyword sets can be managed separately at campaign level – especially for mobile traffic.  The importance of this structure is increased by the removal of device-specific budgets.  We do not want Google to make all of the decisions about when and where an advertiser’s SEM ad appears.
This will take careful planning, co-ordination with brands and with third-party tools, as well as with Google themselves.
STEAK’s Approach 
At STEAK, we will be creating roll-out plans for each client once we have had live access to the revised AdWords system. We will also be sharing learnings and training between our offices around the world and with our colleagues at other Dentsu agencies. Our focus will be two-fold: safeguarding and improving existing campaign performance, whilst taking advantage of the new features “Enhanced Campaigns” will bring to the table in 2013.

The post Google AdWords Enhanced Campaigns appeared first on Steak news and blog.

Panda, introduced two years ago in February 2011, penalised sites built using low quality, scraped and poorly structured content. Initially called “the farmer update”, it was designed to target the sites that had managed to rank for terms using very poor content, which were often also laden with adverts mid-text and deviously served pop-unders. It worked to an extent, but Google knew they had to target the links that came with it, and so in April 2012 Penguin – and the associated penalties – appeared for “unnatural links pointing to your site”.

Pre-Penguin, a raft of off-site link building techniques existed, ranging from the outright manipulation of linking signals to the greyer, murkier area of Google’s quality guidelines and allowed SEOs and agencies to operate as an independent channel with all necessary activity involved in running the account ‘under one roof’. Links could be built or bought in volume, while rankings, visibility and traffic increased and the SEOs didn’t have to disturb anyone in other departments.

But in the post-Penguin online space, it’s not so simple.

Gone are the days of mass link buying and manipulation. Google has penalised many of the sites taking part in this kind of activity and worked to level the playing field. In order to generate the authority signals Google is looking for, what once would have been a narrow channel-based view of SEO, now has to encompass a range of online marketing activity from content production, through creative advertising on to web-based PR techniques.

But SEOs haven’t always been great at this.

The key to success is a return to first-order marketing principles and the creation of value for consumers; we need to move away from content creation focussed on gaming search signal metrics and a move towards content created for users. Rather than a myopic focus on the tangible outcome-metrics – such as number of shares, links and comments – at briefing and planning stage we need to be better at knowing what really drives those actions: are we creating content and distributing news which is good enough to get a response from a real, human audience?

People from within the SEO industry have always spoken about having “great content”, but getting an accurate definition has been hard to pin down. Content is more than just writing a blog about the latest industry trend, because who wants to read, link to or share a post on the latest EU gender directive that’s affecting an industry (apart from a few people in that industry)? Marketers need to be more ambitious and show more imagination than that; are we solving a problem for our customers, are we producing work which surprises and delights them, is our output better than yet more landfill content?

This is a deceptively fundamental shift, and one not every agency nor every SEO Manager or Strategist is capable of making, certainly not without education. Just take a look at the content the SEO industry has been churning out for the past few years – “Top Five Tips For Walking” and “What Strictly Come Dancing Taught Me About Balance Transfer Cards” – to understand the change required. A complete change in the content production thought process was (and is) required, taking the emphasis from “what can we produce at volume?” to “what do our customers want to actually see?”

That’s not to say that all SEOs are (or should be) in charge of content, but they must be involved, as do the other disciplines. True visibility of a brand in the digital space has matured into a broader concept. An engaging and useful social presence, utilising rich and engaging content combined with a strong product offering and on-site experience is a culmination of channels combining to create a greater experience. In order for this to happen, digital in general needs to embrace SEO as a factor in all its activity, and SEO needs to embrace the mechanics of marketing, advertising and selling to customers in different buying contexts.

This is all good news for digital agencies and brands and marketers, but it does mean a lot of change client-side and agency-side. Digital must be viewed in the round, rather than as separate channels, if brands are to effectively use a space which is only going to be become more fundamental to people’s lives and purchasing habits. After all, when we look for the work that displays the greatest volume of the signals that we, as SEO practitioners, seek, we frequently find it outside the SEO channel as social and creative teams embrace content as a means to engage consumers and build brands. How are we as performance marketers going to super-charge this activity and move toward a kind of ‘optimised branding’ which reflects the most effective communications online?

The huge advantage SEO agencies and practitioners have as the industry wrestles with these new forms is in the insight, monitoring and tracking of online activity and our understanding of the structural realities that lie beneath the surface level of online interaction. The digital industry is acutely aware of the differences in audience engagement above and below the line, so the insight and data driven approach can be seen as a massive advantage.  This ‘engineering’ level, and the technical capacity to understand, work within and account for it in planning and deploying digital marketing is an offering not always mirrored in more ‘traditional’ creative digital marketing services.

Adding that seamlessly to strong idea-based content, marketing, social-media and online PR activity will be something of a true advance in online communications and commerce. Agencies who have spent the last year struggling with change should be optimistic about the opportunity this offers, provided they are bold enough to adopt new thinking, adapt their processes and bring in the diverse talent necessary to capitalise on it.

The post Content, and the Future of Search appeared first on Steak news and blog.

How will this impact budgets and performance?

This is the big question. How will these changes affect PPC figures for advertisers?

In January 2013, across our retail clients, we saw on average:

• 28% of non-brand PPC media spend go on PLAs
• 31% of non-brand PPC sales come through PLAs

This vertical is already reliant on these ads for a significant proportion of conversions and the coming changes will only increase this further.

Estimates from Google as to the additional cost have been, to say the least, varied and quite extreme. For different months in 2013 we have been quoted an additional cost ranging between 30 – 90% of 2012 AdWords spend – that’s not PLA spend but total AdWords spend. While the uplift in PLA activity is to some degree backed-up by research from the US market we would take these Google estimates with a pinch of salt. Yes, increased dependency will force CPCs up over time and the more prominent position will encourage clicks but an additional 90% on top of existing budgets does seem somewhat ambitious even by Google’s standards.

For advertisers with an established PLA presence these changes do offer a great opportunity though. These ads have proven since their launch to drive high-value traffic and if Google are to push further developments once the paid-for version is rolled out, then all the better.

Performance of existing PPC activity should also be monitored. The rise of PLA advertisers will, for the first time, be double serving – there is nothing stopping both a PLA and a traditional text ad appearing for the same search term. As such your CTR will decline as you receive 2 (or more) impressions but can only receive 1 click at best.

What should advertisers be doing to address these changes?

1. Ensure you have a Merchant Centre account and you’ve set up PLAs campaigns within AdWords.
2. You absolutely must be able to accurately track this activity. Make sure your tracking solution can support PLAs – as with any digital marketing campaign, these will require regular monitoring, analysis and optimisation.
3. Review the quality of your feed going in the Merchant Centre. Shopping results will now have more stringent criteria to match those of PLAs. Ads will stop showing for shopping results if these are not met – cutting off your sales.
4. Have some flexibility in your budgets. Even with lessons learnt from the US roll out there are still many unknowns around the expected increases in PPC spend. Don’t sacrifice the established AdWords text ads to absorb PLA activity if possible.
5. Advertisers with the most advanced feeds will be best placed to take advance of the changes to shopping. See if your PPC agency has the skill set to manage this directly. Revisit what management solutions are on the market if you feel you’re lacking in this area.
6. Your blend of SEO and PPC traffic will inherently change. This needs to be reflected in targets and strategy.
7. Educate your colleagues as to the changes. There may be some notable shifts in performance coming through the search channels.

By Google’s own admission, the PLA and shopping functionality is still in its comparative infancy, much like the AdWords platform 5 years ago – and think of all the advances in this time-span. PLAs look to be one of the first major steps by the search giant towards creating richer user experiences and engagement directly on the results pages.

As a user I’m hoping that these changes will allow for a truly advanced shopping function that lets me find what I want to buy.

As a PPC expert at STEAK, I’m looking forward to learning more about optimising this traffic source to maximise returns for our clients – and seeing how Google develop tools to help us achieve that aim. PPC never stops changing – and with Enhanced Campaigns also launching, it’s already shaping up to be a busy year of learning, training and testing.

The post PPC Briefing: Google Shopping, PLAs and AdWords Part 2 appeared first on Steak news and blog.

“Thought you’d find this interesting: 66% of Advertisers Using Paid Social Ads Say ROI is Still a Concern”

Being in Social Marketing, my natural response to seeing articles about social media in searchenginewatch.com is ‘this deserves some serious scrutiny.’

“It’s an interesting article,” I responded.

Interesting I thought, because the first five paragraphs are just filler stats about how many marketers are now using social media advertising as part of their efforts. Of course they are; Facebook is forcing them to, otherwise nothing they do on the platform will get seen. And Twitter is quickly following suit… and so will all the others in time (they are, after all, advertising platforms, non? Tumblr excluded).

Finally in paragraph six the article gets to its point: advertisers still don’t understand why they’re using social media (projected nicely back on to the medium itself by the use of the phrase ‘problem… finding a proper metric’) and this is even more irksome now that it’s costing them money.

“My view is this,” I continued.

“If you are using social media for brand awareness you need to frame ROI in those terms, compare it to other brand awareness mediums (rather than direct response advertising).

How do you measure the ROI of a radio ad? How do you measure the ROI of a TV ad? Through vague, rather unsatisfactory, correlation methods.

It still amazes me how many organizations are happy to ‘do social media’ just because it’s there.

“The advantage of social as a brand awareness medium is that you can not only measure reach and exposure more effectively than you can with other mediums but can now actually gauge levels of interest and sentiment too through the addition of engagement metrics”

Going above and beyond the old brand awareness model is quite important, after all brand awareness/exposure can be good and bad, right? Almost every time I’m forced to watch some God-awful pre-roll video ad before the thing I’m really there for, the only thing that stops me screaming like a banshee as I scramble for the non-existent ‘skip’ button is an image that flits across my mind of a smug, self-satisfied media exec presenting phenomenal exposure metrics back to his client (it’s weird, the meditational methods that calm us down).

“Magazines that sell you an ad based on the fact that they have 100,000 readers that fit your demographic,” I continued, “gloss over the fact that they simply have no idea how many of these people will actually have seen your ad. Even less idea (OK, I know it’s not even possible) of how people have actually reacted.”

We put it out there. Job done.

“As targeting becomes more effective, numbers naturally go down and marketers don’t like reporting lower numbers back to their seniors – even if the efforts have been more measurable and likely far more effective.”

“The industry as whole still doesn’t really get this, and that’s where articles like this come from.”

Some businesses have been making social as a brand awareness medium work for ages. Hell, Oreo won the Super Bowl with a single piece of social content this year. How does that make the companies that spent $4 million on TV spots feel? Is anyone asking where the ROI in social media advertising is here? This is brand awareness in 2013 people.

“Rant over” I typed, realizing I’d probably slightly overreacted to this innocuous piece of information sharing. Maybe I should have written about the 16% of people who said their social campaigns were primarily direct response related, I think.

“Apologies ”

“Blog post?”

The post Why I Can’t Believe Social Media Advertising is Still Getting This Kind of Response appeared first on Steak news and blog.