Have you ever visited a webpage that redirected you to a different page you weren’t looking for? Or perhaps, you got the “Sorry, not available” message? Well, you are not alone, my friend. Unwarranted URL errors are more common than you might think. Fortunately, there are SEO best practices you can utilize for URL redirects that will allow you to combat those frustrating errors.

In this post, I will cover what redirects are, why they’re important, the most common types of redirects, their impact on SEO, and URL best practices to use. It’s essential to understand how and when to use redirects properly as they can improve the user’s experience and help a website rank from an SEO perspective.

What Is a URL Redirect?

A URL redirect is a technique used to forward users from an old, or possibly a no longer existing URL, to another URL that is active and working properly.

For example, let’s say a jewelry website has an outdated page, “https://www.jewerly.com/silverearrings” (URL A), that they don’t want users visiting anymore. They can use a redirect code 301 to permanently redirect URL A to a new page that has updated content “https://www.jewerly.com/goldearrings” (URL B). Now, if a user clicks on URL A, they will automatically be redirected to URL B and see the updated content.

Redirects are used for temporarily forwarding traffic during server maintenance, a website relocation to a new domain, merging duplicate content, and relocating website visitors from old content to new content. There are a lot of different types of redirect codes, so it’s extremely important to know the differences between each type and when to use them.

Types of URL Redirects

There are many types of redirects you can use. In this section, I’ll be focusing on the most used redirects which are 301, 302, and 307, as 308 is rarely used. 404s are not ideal to have so I’ll touch on those in the best practices section. While most used redirects may sound similar at first glance, these unique redirect codes are quite meaningful for SEOs and need to be used properly. When choosing which redirect code to use, you have to narrow down which type will be the most effective for your specific goal.

301 Redirect URL

A 301 redirect URL is used when a page is permanently deleted or removed from a website. It is the most common and cleanest redirect code used. A 301 code is used to preserve traffic, rankings, and backlinks.

A 301 redirect will eventually get indexed by search engines that include its new content and is considered the most efficient and search engine-friendly method for a redirect. This method takes search engines weeks to months to index the redirected page. 301 redirects are not harmful. In fact, if used correctly, they are actually beneficial since the new page will have the same page authority as the original.

Use a 301 redirect URL when:

• Fixing broken backlinks (404s)
• Resolving duplicate content
• Merging two websites and want to redirect users to the correct page(s)
• Creating a new subdomain
• Choosing the correct canonical URL

302 Redirect URL

A 302 redirect URL is used when a page is temporarily moved to another URL. This redirect code does not pass any page authority from the old URL to a new URL since it is not permanent. Search engines will still be able to index the original URL and maintain its ranking. It’s important to know the goal of your redirect because if you mix up which redirect code you’re using, you can end up having the opposite effect from what you wanted.

For example, let’s say you’re promoting a new product (Page B) and want to temporarily send users to this page. Google knows it’s temporary and won’t remove the original page (Page A) from search results or devalue its ranking. But if you accidentally use a 301 redirect instead of a 302 redirect, the original page (Page A) will lose ranking and can be deindexed by search engines.

Use a 302 redirect URL when:

• Working on a website’s maintenance
• Special promotions page
• A/B testing
• Redirecting mobile visitors to desktop and vice versa

307 Redirect URL

A 307 redirect URL or HTTP 307 Temporary Redirect is pretty much the same as a 302 redirect code. They are both temporary and are used for similar purposes. However, a 307 code is a server-side redirect specifically used for HTTP. This redirect URL code method is used to make sure the HTTP request doesn’t change when the server responds with a redirect. A 307 redirect code has no big impact on SEO.

Instead of using 307 redirects, it’s best practice to use a 302 redirect code instead.

How Do URL Redirects Impact SEO?

Google has a positive standpoint on redirects. In previous years, SEOs were concerned that too many website redirects would result in a plunge in search engine rankings. But Google’s current stance confirms that 301, 302, and 307 redirects if used properly, don’t have a harmful impact on SEO. In fact, redirects can help transfer domains smoothly and update permalink structures.

In addition, Google explains that “301 or 302 redirects do not cause a loss in PageRank”. This means that when you use a 301 URL redirect, search engines pass along the page authority from the original URL to the new URL without hurting your SEO.

When executed well, redirects will not harm your SEO rankings. But if they are poorly executed, redirects can lower your SEO rankings. Therefore, it’s important to know which redirects to use for a website so you can avoid negatively impacting your site’s performance.

Domain Redirects

When migrating a site, the best way to redirect domains should be with a 301 redirect code to the primary domain. This method is used because a 301 redirect is permanent. It is best practice to point a 301 redirect code from each domain that has a www, non-www, HTTP, and HTTPS. Google appreciates the main domain to be HTTPS. Once redirected, always remember to check if the new domain has been indexed. You can use tools like Google’s URL Inspection Tool.

Best Practices For URL Redirects

Below I will share six best practices for URL redirects. Follow these tips to encounter fewer, if any, problems with redirects. Remember, the more emphasis you put on implementing correct methods for URL redirects, the less chaotic your website will be.

1. Redirect to the Most Relevant & Similar Pages

For URL redirect SEO best practices, try redirecting to the most relevant and similar pages. Redirecting to pages that have a completely different intent than the original is considered bad practice and should be avoided at all costs.

2. Avoid Redirect Chains

Redirect chains are a common mistake, and it’s important to avoid them. The user may not be able to see the many jumps of chain redirects, but Google takes notice. A good tool to spot redirect chains is Screaming Frog. After five redirects, Google will stop crawling, resulting in never showing the new URL.

3. Update Internal Links

Ensure internal links are always updated. As a best practice, internal links should be accurate or could result in slowing down a website significantly. It’s important to keep redirects to a minimum on a website as much as possible. Prioritize cleaning up redirects to preserve SEO authority and to reduce the impact on Googlebot crawling. You never know when old redirects could cause unsolvable behavior within a website.

4. Avoid Meta Refresher Tags

Stay clear of meta refresher tags. Meta refresher tags have a message on a page counting down in seconds that usually say, “if you are not redirected in 10 seconds, click here.” and will load another URL. This technique is not only spammy, but it pushes users to pages with different content than what they were originally looking for. These redirects are bad for user experience and definitely not recommended for SEO.

5. Avoid Soft 404’s

Avoid soft 404’s. Google will treat a redirect to an irrelevant page as a soft 404. This means Google will ignore the redirect and not pass page authority. For example, if a page showed a shoe promotion and the sale just ended, that link should be redirected to a URL that shows a similar product and not redirected to a page that shows cars.

6. Use 404’s Sparingly and Get Creative

It’s ok to occasionally have 404’s. Sometimes, it’s necessary to leave a page as a 404, especially when there isn’t an equivalent page on a new site. When you do have them, it’s nice to create a custom 404 page with contact information or helpful links can provide value to a user. This technique will guide a user to what they are looking for and keep them on your site.

Final Thoughts

Consistency is key! While it can be time-consuming to properly implement URL redirects, especially if you have thousands of redirects within your website, it will be worth it, in the long run, to take your time and do it correctly the first time. This will help prevent future headaches and disasters for your website.

It truly is a matter of having a clear understanding of when to use each type of URL redirect that best suits the situation and following the best practices mentioned above. And always, always check that all of your pages are redirecting to the correct URL and, of course, have fun while you’re doing it.

The post Types of URL Redirects & SEO Best Practices appeared first on Portent.

Digital marketing is a moving target. Platforms and practices have evolved immensely since I started at Portent 10 years ago in many ways. Automation is one of the biggest ways things are changing. And changing for the better, I might add!

Is Google automating us out of our jobs? I don’t believe so.

Today, we are spending less time with mundane tasks like manual bid changes and instead focusing on strategy while we allow algorithms to carry more of the weight. And the fact is, they are better at those tasks anyway. The question now is, how can we use automation to achieve better results?

Google and other platforms continue to find new ways to help us be successful. Performance Max campaigns are a big step forward in that regard. But with an innovation like this, there are pros and cons to consider. And there is definitely a right and wrong way to execute and optimize.

Let’s start from the top.

What are Performance Max campaigns?

Performance Max (or PMax) is a relatively new goal-based campaign type that was first launched in November 2021. These campaigns are eligible to show across Google’s entire array of ad inventory and use automation and data to determine when and where your ads should show up to reach your goals.

This “one size fits all” campaign type is the latest step from Google to use machine learning to take more control over what your ad looks like, when they will be served, and who they are served to.

One particularly interesting aspect about them is how they are replacing Smart Shopping campaigns completely. Smart Shopping was a step toward more automation when it debuted in 2018 and became a best practice from Google over standard Shopping campaigns. So this shift to PMax is notable.

What control do you have?

PMax might feel like you are handing over the keys to Google, but that is not completely true. There are still a number of ways you can influence the campaign targeting and likelihood of success.

• Goal setting
• Budgets
• Creative and copy assets
• Geo-targeting
• Google My Business and product feeds
• Audience signals
• Bidding

There is a right and wrong way to utilize and optimize PMax campaigns. From your expectations around output to the role they might play in a marketing funnel to following best practices around creative assets, having a clear strategy and executing will be key to success.

Where do PMax campaigns show up?

In short, everywhere.

Google believes all of its ad inventory is valuable. So the more they can combine all those targeting options into a simple campaign and allow their machine learning to dictate which placement is the right placement for that particular campaign and advertiser, the better.

In many ways, I agree with them. Google isn’t the first one to push for this type of “full inventory” approach. In the past, mixing network placement in the same campaign was a big mistake. Doing so meant bidding the same for different placements in ways that would hurt performance. But with automated bidding, that all changed. Now the bid strategy governs our bids and allows for a greater crossover of placements in a campaign type like PMax.

Pros of Performance Max Campaigns

There is a lot to consider as we all contemplate how to use PMax to our advantage. Some of the pros are more straightforward, while others are more apparent once you get into the weeds of how these campaigns really work.

Automation

The most obvious pro is the ability to leverage automation more fully. Bid automation has proven that, with the right data input, it can outperform a human’s ability to bid effectively to a goal. I embrace an automation solution like PMax that does the same with ad placement and creative as well. With this, we also gain:

• More conversions
• More conversion value
• Time saved
• New customers (PMax work well at attracting users at the top of the funnel)

Works well with existing search campaigns

As you dive into the functionality of how they work in your Google Ads account, there are some clear benefits as well. Most notably is how they work with your existing Search campaigns. At this time, PMax is only replacing Smart Shopping. Other campaigns like Search campaigns should play nicely with PMax campaigns. Search keywords will take priority, which still gives the advertiser some control when targeting high-priority search terms.

All that said, this list of pros is shorter than what Google touts. Many of their pros, like PMax providing richer campaign insights, don’t appear to be true. There is certainly some selling going on as Google works to gain adoption.

Cons of Performance Max Campaigns

The list of potential cons to consider is a little bit longer.

Less control

PMax provides advertisers with less control. Handing over the control of targeting to automation can be a pro, as I mentioned, but there are clearly drawbacks as well. Less control makes it easier and easier to spend money with Google. Google’s ad inventory is huge, and if we aren’t narrowing down our targeting, the capacity to spend is high. This clearly benefits Google while not always benefiting the advertiser.

Still new

As PMax campaigns are so new, this also adds some additional cons. They are still not available in Google Ads Editor, which makes them more manual to build as you expand. We have less data on them, so best practices are still evolving. And since they are new, we are very likely going to experience frequent changes and updates from Google as they fine-tune.

Limited reporting

But one of the biggest cons I see is around reporting. The first few PMax campaigns I saw spending in accounts all appeared to be performing well! Their ROAS was strong for a campaign that I assumed was spending across the entire Google Network. But as I reviewed it more closely, I found that the PMax campaign was cannibalizing other efforts. Google does not make that clear in platform with limited reporting on what network your spend is going to. This cannibalization makes it hard to judge incremental value and lift.

Beyond just that, reporting is challenging because Google doesn’t really tell us much about PMax performance at all. Most granular network reporting and things like that are all hidden away, making it hard to gain insights (something Google specifics touts as something they are good at).

How to Optimize PMax Campaigns

If PMax isn’t automating us out of a job, then what is there left for us to do as Google automates more and more? With PMax, there are a few things to focus on.

1. Have clear goals

These campaigns are goal-based. Obviously, everyone’s goal is to drive more sales and revenue, but understanding the role you want these campaigns to play in your overall marketing will allow you to set the algorithm up for success.

2. Use insights from existing campaigns

We do have some control over things like ad scheduling, geo-targeting, bid strategies, and audience signals. Use what you have learned from other campaigns to layer in more guardrails to help the algorithm learn quicker and reach your customers.

3. Use all the assets you can

The more high-quality assets you can provide, the more you are giving the AI to work with.

• 5 Headlines
• 5 Long headlines
• 5 Descriptions
• 20 Landscape images
• 20 Square images
• 5 Logos: at least 1 square logo, others are optional
• 5 YouTube videos (not required, min. 10 seconds)

4. Feed optimization

For E-commerce advertisers, optimize your feed. Like standard shopping campaigns, PMax will rely on product feed quality to determine targeting.

5. Collect the right data

Automation depends on accurate data collection to make decisions. To drive the best results, feed the best data possible back into Google. There are a few ways to ensure you are doing that.

• Use a first-party Google global site tag to collect conversion information
• Assign values to your conversion actions so you can use value-based bid strategies like Target ROAS.
• Set up micro conversion actions to send more signals to Google that users are engaging and likely to convert.
• Set up enhanced conversions to ensure you are collecting the most accurate data you can.

Takeaway

Automation is coming. You can fight it or embrace it, but it seems clear that this is the direction digital advertising is going and has been going for some time. Performance Max is just one example of that.

These campaign types might not be perfect. And they are especially not perfect for everyone. Assess your goals, understand how they can help or hurt you, and test.

The post Pros and Cons of Google Ads Performance Max Campaigns appeared first on Portent.

We’ve all seen them on web pages throughout the internet. Featured slideshows – better known as “carousels” – have increased in popularity over the years with a bag of mixed reviews in their wake. Some of the most consistent criticisms revolve around how they can negatively impact a website’s Core Web Vitals scores when they are not properly implemented.

What exactly are Core Web Vitals, you ask? Often abbreviated as CWV, Core Web Vitals are a set of standardized metrics that help developers understand the user experience with a focus on the evaluation of a website’s load time, interactivity, and overall visual stability. Carousels can hurt a website’s CWV scores because of the range in size of their images, causing a slower page load time and poor user experience. Opinions on how to address this issue range from removing them entirely from your website to revamping them into a more optimized experience.

So if you’re building a website for a client where one of the key features is a carousel or you’re a website owner finding it hard to let your own carousel go, worry not. In this post, we’ll break down the details of how carousels affect your Core Web Vitals and what you can do to mitigate their impact for a more balanced user experience.

What Is a Website Carousel?

Let’s first talk about our friend, the carousel. This UX component is easiest described as a slideshow of cards used to showcase either product images, textual information about services and promotions, or a combination of both.

Carousels have a wide variety of use cases. They can be showcased as the header on the homepage with large images or utilized as informational card slideshows using smaller images paired with descriptive text to provide more details on services, awards, reviews, etc. Some carousels don’t feature images at all and are used to highlight a business’s testimonials or other small details.

While carousels can be cumbersome, it’s important to recognize their versatility and potential when choosing to design or build them into a website.

Poorly Implemented Carousels Can Negatively Affect Core Web Vitals Metrics

CWV were created as an initiative by Google to provide unified guidance on how to create a better user experience online. These defined metrics are a good indication of your site’s usability and are also used as an organic ranking factor in Google’s organic search algorithm. So it’s important for your site to perform well with respect to CWV.

When carousels are not implemented properly, they can make or break the user experience on your website and thus lower your CWV scores. Let’s take a look at possible ways that big ol’ carousels could be affecting your site.

Carousel Impact on LCP

The Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) measurement in Core Web Vitals refers to the time it takes for the browser to load the largest image or text content in the viewport. Carousels are often the component that has the greatest impact on LCP when they’re present on a page, especially when utilizing larger images above the fold, as they can be made up of multiple images and lines of text.

According to web.dev, carousels have their LCP calculated based on the first presented image along with the size of each image displayed on the first load of the page. As an example, the LCP will repeatedly recalculate if a carousel is set to “auto-play” or will be impacted if more than one slide image is present on page load and each slide image varies in size, height, or width.

Carousel Impact on FID

First Input Delay (FID) is measured based on the amount of time it takes for the page to respond after a user performs their first action, such as clicking a button or link. Normally when a delay is detected, it has been caused by a component or function of the site that is resource-heavy or render-blocking.

Luckily, carousels generally have minimal Javascript requirements and aren’t usually the cause of issues related to interactivity. If your carousel is causing an extended FID, this may be an indication to consider replacing the tooling behind the component.

Carousel Impact on CLS

Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) is the measurement of visual stability or the time it takes for the page to stop jumbling around while it finishes fully loading. Carousels can be big, clunky, animated slideshows that ultimately have the potential to take a longer time to load.

Their impact is often heightened if the slides in the carousel do not have consistent measurement properties for height, width, etc., or if the carousel is set to auto-play as it has the potential to cause CLS indefinitely. This could absolutely leave an impact on visitors, but probably not a positive one!

Web Design & UX Best Practices for Implementing Website Carousels

If you feel like it might just be easier to throw the whole carousel away, hang tight! There are some easy ways to account for the quirks of carousels that can help to prevent your CWV scores from taking a dive and create a great user experience all in one swoop. Below we’ll cover some of the best practices for building an easily navigable carousel that loads in no time.

Performance

As previously discussed, optimization can be the greatest guard against your carousel negatively impacting overall performance. Any part of the carousel – images, text, even the structure – can be revisited to cut down on load time.

1. Decrease Layout Shifts

• Use HTML to load carousel content
  • Changing the structure of your carousel to load the content via the HTML markup will allow the browser to discover the carousel early on in the loading process. Avoid using Javascript to initiate the first load of the carousel, as this can cause delays in images loading and has a large chance of impacting your LCP.

• Restructure slide transitions
  • A bad CLS score will say it all! Slide transitions are one of the more common causes of layout shifts in carousels because they are often generated by changing the layout-inducing attributes of DOM components. Using the CSS property transform to create the carousel transitions can make all the difference in how smoothly it can shift between slides.

2. Update to More Modern Technology

Websites will often use third-party Javascript to implement carousels, which can be a quick and painless way to add this functionality. Updating to newer tooling may increase the site’s performance if your carousel is using less efficient APIs or has dependencies, such as jQuery.

3. Optimize, Optimize, Optimize!

Carousels are just big slideshows! Often the images in a carousel are some of the largest on the site, which also means they’re often hogging all of the load time if they’re not properly sized and compressed. Selecting the correct image formats, compression levels, and image dimensions are just some of the ways that the images can be reduced to load faster.

Navigation

While your CWV scores are going to be the most noticeable behind-the-scenes measurements that affect functionality, it may also be worth examining how the user experience for your carousel can be improved as a whole. Navigation within carousels can stylistically range from site to site, but here are some quick tips for making the most of this small but powerful section.

1. Design Prominent Navigation Controls

Subtlety may not be your best friend when it comes to designing navigational functionality within a carousel. These controls should be easy to find and click without needing to hunt throughout the image to discover them. Users should also be able to see where they are in the carousel by providing clear navigation progress indicators. Preview thumbnails that update depending on which slide is currently being viewed paired with the quintessential directional arrows on the featured image are just some of the ways you can design the navigation of carousels.

This carousel on Blizzard’s website is a good example of well-designed navigation controls. They provide clear arrow navigation on the sides and a visual aid that highlights blue to show slide progress.

2. Don’t Forget About Mobile

Mobile has quickly become one of the most used methods to access websites, and your carousel should reflect that. Adding swipe gestures to allow for easier navigation on mobile will make a world of difference.

This mobile carousel on Home Depot’s website is a good example of what swipe gestures look like in action. They create an easy and intuitive user experience to navigate through the carousel.

Readability

We’ve all seen the carousels that overtake a webpage and make them difficult to parse. The main use for carousels is to provide a short slideshow of a business’s services, promotions, and features that can be read and understood in a short amount of time, so let’s keep it brief!

1. Stay Concise

This is an easy consideration that only requires cutting back on verbiage. Keep your copy short and to the point, lest you lose your visitor’s interest.

2. Separate Your Text From Your Images

It might be tempting to sandwich your text directly onto your image as one PNG file, ready to add to a slide – don’t do it! This can create issues related to image compression, localization, and, most importantly, accessibility. An image that may look great on desktop may get absolutely destroyed in quality on mobile. Keep your text separated from your images, and you’ll be doing everyone a favor!

3. Review the Color Contrast

It’s also important to review the color contrast of your carousel. All copy and content, including any buttons, should be easy to differentiate from the background image on the slide. If the colors between your text and images are too similar, they will blend together and become difficult to read.

Website Carousel Example With Good Readability (Do)

This carousel example from Champion’s website uses high color contrast, bold fonts, and brief copy that is easy to read and clearly provides promotional information.

Website Carousel Example With Bad Readability (Don’t)

In this carousel example from Dom Perignon, the copy is brief but the slide has low color contrast and is difficult to read and navigate.

Product

It can be beneficial to keep or upgrade your carousel, but sometimes it’s best to reconsider how you’re using it and whether it needs to stay at all.

Carousels are often used incorrectly and can easily become a section of the page that users gloss over because they seem like an advertisement, or they are clearly being overused and have become ineffective. Like any part of your site, it’s within your best interest to regularly test and evaluate the effectiveness of your carousel.

1. Test Effectiveness

Carousel clickthrough rates are the best route to discover how users are interacting with your carousel and to help determine how effective your carousel is.

2. Test Relevancy

• Are you filling the carousel with content that didn’t perform well outside of it?
• How are you using your imagery, and is the text featured relevant to your audience?
• Would the average consumer of your product find the content interesting?

These are questions you should ask yourself when placing content within the carousel. Users are more likely to engage with the carousel if it contains relevant content for them.

Conclusion

Carousels are like anything else in your box of website tools – if you use them in just the right scenario and in just the right way, they can actually benefit your site. A poorly implemented carousel can negatively impact your site speed and overall CWV scores. But if you optimize your carousel’s images, structure, and underlying technology, you can turn your carousel into an asset for your website instead of a burden.

Although we’ve covered great ways to improve your carousel’s impact on CWV scores right now, we’d be remiss not to mention that it’s just as important to consistently measure your core web vitals to make sure your carousel doesn’t go downhill and become a problem again in the future. It’s a process, but that’s web development for you!

The post How Website Carousels Impact Your Core Web Vitals (& Best Practices) appeared first on Portent.

Writing digital marketing ad copy isn’t as simple as it used to be. With more businesses than ever using social media platforms to promote their brand, your ads are competing against the best of the best across more and more channels. And as every business owner knows, just throwing up some pictures and a quick sentence or two isn’t going to cut it in our digital world.

Luckily, we are here to show you how to take your flat text and turn it into something powerful that will keep your customers coming back for more. These ten tips are an excellent place to start when writing ad copy for any social media platform, from Instagram to Facebook to Twitter, etc. There’s an art to writing good social media ad copy, but it’s also a skill you can learn with a little knowledge and practice.

1. Research and Understand Your Audience

Know your audience and write specifically for them; you need to know what your prospect marketplace is thinking and find a way to address that. Social media ads are about attracting and engaging potential members, but there’s more to it than that. From the customer’s point of view, each ad should answer the following four questions:

1. What is the brand/product?
2. Why is this product/brand for me?
3. How can I benefit from the brand/product?
4. Where can I find it?

By targeting these questions, you will inherently narrow down your copy to fit the mold of a specific group of people with those needs.

Ad Copy Example #1 – Know Your Audience

In the example above, the ad is targeted at students looking for the best student loan refinance rates. The ad image clearly states who will benefit from this product, and the ad copy defines why the target audience needs this product, how it will benefit them, and lastly, how they can capitalize on the offer with a call-to-action (CTA).

2. Solve a Problem For Your Customer

Whenever you write an ad, it’s your job to remove all barriers preventing a potential customer from making a purchase. Put yourself in the user’s shoes and answer this question: What would keep you from clicking an ad, visiting a landing page, filling out a form on the page, or making a purchase?

At every stage, you should include information that potential customers need to make an informed decision. You can identify what that information is by asking your customers about their pain points. There are a lot of ways to identify the customer’s needs, but the best way is to hear what they have to say. Customers are often more in tune with customer service, quality of a product, or unresolved issues than you might think, so talk to them to know what pain points to focus on. They’re a wealth of information when it comes to knowing what they want. They have suggestions for you, and they’ll be honest with you, too. Make sure there is always a benefit to using your product/service that will solve one of their pain points. It should never just be about what you offer but how it benefits the customer.

We often recommend the Problem-Agitate-Solve formula. The formula works like this: Identify a problem, analyze that problem, and uncover the solution. Consumers want to hear that you can identify the problem and produce a product or service that can easily solve the problem in their life. You want to communicate how your product or service will help them solve their problem and how they can get in touch with you. This can include re-emphasizing the aspects of your ad’s headline and developing more details on how your service or product will benefit them.

Ad Copy Example #2 – Solve a Problem

This example is a Facebook ad that addresses the problem and solution in the body copy of this ad. The problem: Not reaching the right audience. The Solution: Download our FREE persona guide. By offering this downloadable solution, they are helping consumers become more aware of the mass solution that is accessible via their brand. This ad is an excellent example of a subtle Problem-Agitate-Solve formula.

3. Keep Ad Copy Short

The average user scrolls for 75% of the time they are on each social media app, just like when in a store shopping; for a consumer to stop and take a look at an individual item, it needs to catch their eye while scanning. That doesn’t always mean that you need to make your shirts hot pink, but that you need to make the shirt appealing enough that they want to take a closer look. A similar thought process goes on when you are drafting ad copy. You may only have a few seconds to get your point across, so it’s important to keep your ad as short and sweet as possible.

What are you more likely to click on: A snappy, amusing message one can relate to or a long-drawn-out paragraph of text explaining the many reasons why this is something you need? Although those points may be valid, the user will not stay long enough to reach the big firework finale. Short ad copy is essential today, where attention spans are notoriously lower for people on social media.

Each platform has various character limits that you should cater your ad copy to. It’s important to note that you do not need to use all of the characters you are given; less is generally more. Making sure your ad copy is an appropriate length for the designated platform it’s on can improve your chances of getting people to read or engage with your posts. To make your job a little easier, we’ve put together a cheat sheet on social media character limits and ideal post lengths.

Ad Copy Example #3 – Short Ad Copy

This is an excellent example of ad copy that is short, sweet, and to the point. Amazon knows its target audience is already interested in outdoor furniture, so the goal is primarily to get more eyes on what they have available. This ad focuses on the images of each product (what the users truly care about) and gives a brief explanation of what they are looking for and how they can get the product by shopping now.

4. Have a Clear Call to Action (CTA)

A CTA (Call to Action) prompts your audience to complete the desired action on your ad. An attention-grabbing CTA button can accomplish a lot – it can entice audiences to respond to your ads and buy your products, as well as tell people what will happen after they click. It can even maximize traffic, pull a conversion, or get a prospect to download. After testing, our team has concluded that including a CTA button on the ad and promoting a direct action in the ad copy will offer you the highest conversion rates on your ads. By including a call to action in your ad copy, you are clearly telling the user how to get from Point A (I want X) to Point B (I now have X).

A great real-life example of this would be asking your friend for drinks. While showing them a picture of an ice-cold margarita may entice them, including the phrase “Let’s go get these margaritas at the Mexican restaurant down the street” will solidify their desire and steer them to the action of doing so.

Ad Copy Example #4 – CTA

This ad copy is an excellent example of a direct CTA. This shows what they need to do to complete the action, which in this case is download, and what they will receive when completing the action.

5. Utilize Visuals to Aid Your Ad Copy

Ad copy can’t carry the team. Ad copy is just one part of the intricate process of paid campaigns on social platforms. It is critical that you use images and or videos that work in tandem with your ad copy. For one to succeed, they need the other.

One of the most extensive recommendations we give clients when they send us new creative for an ad campaign is WHY? Why this photo? What story does this photo tell the user? The image or video is the first thing that a user sees when scrolling, and it is imperative that the graphic tells the product’s story.

Many digital marketers think that text on an image is bad, but approximately 20% of your ad image can contain text, according to the image text rule. This will help guide the consumer through the user journey, almost like giving them a sneak peek of the good stuff before diving deep into the ad copy or landing page.

Ad Copy Example #5 – Visuals

This is an excellent example of an ad gone wrong. When a user scrolls past this ad, it does not tell the user WHY. Why am I being shown this ad, and how can it benefit me. This leaves the user confused about what this brand is and ultimately means the user probably kept scrolling and potentially missed out on a product they needed.

6. Creatively Use Emojis

These days, people rely on emojis for all of their social media communication. As we have said before, the goal is to stand out, and emojis can help you do that. Over 90% of consumers use emojis in their daily lives, which means they may be more privy to them when seeing them in ads. Emojis have the ability to express mood and tone of voice via online messaging. Even further, it seems that we as users even change our expression when we look at an emoji. Emojis have a way of changing the tone of a sentence without using additional words. For example:

1. Wow, that shirt is cool 🥱
2. Wow, that shirt is cool ❤️
3. Wow, that shirt is cool 🙄

Although the text is the same for these three sentences, the different emojis dramatically change the tone and attitude of each sentence.

Emojis are a great way to get creative with your ad copy. However, as a word of caution, remember that less is more. You want to find a balance between using them to get the mood across without overwhelming the user with too many emojis.

Ad Copy Example #6 – Emojis

7. Use a Consistent Brand Voice & Tone

Brand consistency is a phrase we often hear in marketing, and it is just as important with paid social ad copy. The foundation of branding is not only your company logo and colors but also your tone of voice, which needs to be instantly recognizable across all marketing channels. These days, brands have to maintain a consistent presence on their website, Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter, Instagram, and various other communication channels.

A key part of managing your brand voice is to have a clearly definted target audience. Writing effective ad copy becomes much easier when you know who you are talking to. s. Understanding your target audience will help you define your tone of voice, jargon, personas, and syntax. All of these elements will create your unique “brand.”

Many companies create an entire personality through their social media, for example, Wendy’s, which became a talking point on the brand itself. Wendy’s social media brand presence has come to represent who they are and has become a public relations move for the company and thier marketing team. Creating a character through your social media makes your brand more relatable (foreshadowing) and develops more consistency across platforms.

Ad Copy Example #7 – Brand Voice & Tone

Tiffany & Co’s voice is elegant, classy, and sophisticated which you see reflected in their ad copy across all social media platforms. They almost never use exclamation points or emojis and keep their ad copy short and to the point with minimal hashtags. In unison with their ad copy, they also utilize high-quality images of their products with simple backgrounds and frequently partner with celebrities. Keeping this consistent voice and tone throughout their ads allows customers to instantly recognize Tiffany & Co’s brand regardless of the platform as well as solidify what that brand is.

8. Be Conversational and Relateable

In order to have a productive dialogue with your customers on social media, you need to be conversational. You should always try to relate your message to the interests of your customers and acknowledge the events happening around the world. Be informative and answer any questions or concerns they may have about a product or service in a straightforward way. After all, if you can’t help a customer on social media, you’re not going to be able to help them in person either. If you make your audience feel like they are being sold to, it will turn them off. The best way to do that is by making sure that every word in your ad copy has meaning and purpose. If it doesn’t, then it needs to go.

We recommend trying to be relatable by being a friendly voice of reason rather than a salesperson. By using conversational phrases and relating to the interests of your target audience they will feel more comfortable spending money and your brand and feel confident coming back again and again.

Pro Tip: Utilize the ability to interact with your customers. Ask open-ended questions and use those to better your product or brand. These questions help your customers open up and share their experiences with you in order to build a better relationship. Once they feel comfortable doing so, they’ll be more likely to buy from you in the future.

Ad Copy Example #8 – Conversational

Nike has been in the hierarchy of relatable brands since the beginning of time. They use a large platform to speak on subjects that are happening around the world. Although Nike does a tremendous job speaking on the heavier subjects, they also frequently talk about the everyday trends we see in fashion. The examples below show Nike’s ability to choose specific and important conversations on social media, which enables Nike to be a part of a larger community and grow their audience.

9. Research Competitor Examples

This may seem obvious, but it’s important to research competing ads. First, it helps us understand what the competition is doing that works and what doesn’t; second, by deconstructing our competitor’s ad copy, we can model ideas to replicate or improve upon their efforts in a new way. The most effective ad copy will be one that truly speaks to your audience—and with social media marketing, your audience has access to a lot more information about you than they would from traditional advertising channels like television or radio. If you want to convert them into customers, you need to speak directly to them using language they understand and appreciate.

Researching competitors and other similar companies give you an instant leg up in understanding what’s working, why it’s working, and how to do it better. What can you learn from your competition? Not only can you see what’s working, but you can also see what isn’t working—and why. By understanding those insights (the why not?), then you have a blueprint to avoid making the same mistakes as your competition.

Ad Copy Example #9 – Competitors

Since Hydro Flask has gone viral, competing companies like Yeti have been attempting to keep up with the trend hydro flask has created. In these examples, both companies produced bright summer closers of tumblers that are versatile to fit many different types of chilled drinks. Although they are both building similar style campaigns, they are adding their own skin on the product and campaign to match their brand and voice and pull consumers from buying from the competing brand.

10. A/B Test Your Ad Copy

A/B testing, also known as split testing, is the process of testing an ad to understand how it performs in relation to a particular goal. This helps you assess your target audience’s response, and you can then optimize future campaigns based on these learnings.

Split testing is one of the most powerful tools to use when you’re trying to improve your ad copy. The goal is to A/B test your ad copy to prove which version of your ad performs better in terms of clicks and conversions. This is the best way to improve your conversion rate and CTRs, both of which will result in more leads and sales over time. Testing is the only way to determine what works with your specific audience, products, and brand. Without thorough testing, you run the risk of doing what has worked for other brands when in fact, it doesn’t work for you.

Pro Tip: While there are various options for what you can test (Headlines, Primary ad text, In-text CTA, CTA buttons, The length of the ad copy, etc.), we highly recommend focusing on one element at a time. This will give you more defined data on what works for your brand and what doesn’t. Facebook offers a great resource on the best practices for A/B testing on their platform.

Ad Copy Example #10 – A/B Testing

This is an example of a concrete A/B test. The objective was to uncover an audience pain point and solution for visitors. The ad on the left uses the term “reach your goals”, whereas the ad on the right uses the term “save time”. This is targeted to conclude whether the majority of users are looking to use their software to with meet objectives or preserve time. Using the analytical data at the end of this a/b test will help marketers determine what pain points the ads need to emphasize.

Wrap Up

To summarize, copywriting is an ongoing process, and a good enough first draft isn’t good enough. You need to be changing and improving your ad copy constantly. By following these recommendations, you will be simultaneously making your social media content more accessible for users and working towards creating a more well-rounded marketing stack for your brand.

Unleash your creativity with our high-converting ad copy tips. When you follow the steps outlined above, you’ll be primed to develop the best ad copy for your perfect audience, all while staying true to your own distinctive brand voice.

The post 10 Tips for Writing Social Media Ad Copy That Converts appeared first on Portent.

Nowadays, web analytics platforms allow digital marketers to easily track all kinds of data around user behavior and browsing patterns to generate relevant insights. However, knowing which metrics to track and measure can be challenging and overwhelming. This task gets increasingly difficult as your website or mobile app scales over time and caters to various users and social media platforms.

To help simplify this process, I’ve narrowed down six essential marketing metrics that will provide you with strategic values and measure the effectiveness of your organic and paid digital marketing efforts.

But before we jump into the metrics, it’s crucial to ask yourself the following three questions:

1. What are the main objectives of your business?
2. What aspects of your website/app are critical for your company’s short and long-term growth?
3. What user actions are the primary drivers for the success of your company?

Now that you have this information about your business let’s dive in.

1. Conversions

To measure user behaviors that are important to your business, you can start defining macro and micro conversions that align with your business objectives.

Macro conversions are the primary conversions on your website, such as purchase completion, lead form submission, and click-to-phone calls. In comparison, micro conversions are good indicators to demonstrate users’ interest in your company’s products and services, such as signing up for newsletters, reading blog posts, and downloading whitepapers.

A set of micro conversions can potentially accumulate and lead to relatively higher-valued macro conversions. For instance, a user who subscribed to a newsletter, a micro conversion, could click on a product link, browse further on your site/mobile app, and place an order, resulting in a macro conversion.

How to Track Conversions

To measure your chosen conversions, you can set up goals on Google Analytics and Google Tag Manager to track destination, duration, event goals, etc.

Below is a screenshot of goals on Google Analytics.

2. Spend

In today’s competitive marketing landscape, it is inevitable that companies spend thousands of dollars each month to attain the targeted traffic and conversions. Tracking where to spend and how much on marketing campaigns not only allows you to plan your marketing budget and strategy but also to know the effectiveness of your paid search and paid social campaigns.

Quarterly and monthly total costs are not sufficient to tell you whether your money is well spent. You also need to look at the cost per click and cost of conversion of each paid campaign to make comparisons. You can adjust your marketing budget accordingly based on the paid campaign performance and the target audience.

How to Track Spend

To build a marketing budget report, I recommend using Google Data Studio and blending several data sources into one to show the marketing budget for each social platform.

In the screenshot below, I have data sources from major social platforms, and I blended these data sources by using the date dimension as the join key.

Since Google Data Studio allows data blending for up to five data sources, I am able to show the monthly budgets of different social platforms side by side for comparison in the dashboard below.

If you get stuck trying to blend data sources, check out our post on troubleshooting data blends on Google Data Studio.

3. User Engagement

Pages per session and session duration are two metrics that provide a concise view of the broad spectrum of user activity and purchase patterns that occur on your site/app.

• Pages per session: as users find more relevant content on your site, you might notice that the number of pages browsed in a single session is relatively high. Consider the pages per session metric for the recent few months as a baseline and as your team incorporates relevant content, blogs, and media on your site, keep track of this metric and how it correlates to the overall conversion rate.
• Session duration: social media sites are a prime example of illustrating session duration. Youtube, for instance, strives in various ways to keep users engaged with features including related videos, personalized feed, recommendations, etc.

Applying the same principle to your site/app, consider incorporating the content of various styles and form factors (video, blog posts, landing pages, content guides, etc.) to provide various ways of conveying value pertaining to a product or service.

It is a good idea to establish the current baseline for average session duration and work towards improving user engagement with relevant media and content. Assess session duration as a key metric periodically and analyze how it ties into the overall success of your offerings.

You may be wondering why I didn’t include Bounce Rate. That’s because it is being replaced in Google Analytics 4 with Engagement Rate.

Engagement rate is the percentage of engaged sessions (Engaged sessions divided by Sessions). According to Google Analytics 4, “the number of sessions that lasted 10 seconds or longer, or had 1 or more conversion events or 2 or more page or screen views” is considered “engaged sessions.” This new metric can show you how users interact and how long they stay on your site/app as opposed to how they exist.

How to Track User Engagement

I recommend using Google Analytics Audience Overview report to track and analyze user engagement. Tools like Crazy Egg and Hotjar are often used to track users’ clicks and behavior on your site.

Below is a screenshot of the Audience Overview report on Google Analytics.

4. Errors

When you make changes to your website like migrating content from one CMS (content management system) to another, upgrading website technology, conducting server maintenance, etc., it’s possible to encounter web page errors such as:

• 404: page not found
• 503: service unavailable
• 401: authorized
• 403: access denied

Such site errors might leave your users confused and result in users most likely exiting the site, not to mention leaving a bad impression of the service quality.

How to Track Errors

Free tools such as Google Search Console and Google Analytics provide a convenient way to track any errors on your site in near real-time. Keeping a close eye on such errors and incorporating the process of fixing such errors into your day-to-day content administration workflow can help keep the overall error rate at a minimum and provide consistent value for your users.

Below is a screenshot of what the Index Coverage report from Google Search Console looks like.

5. Onsite Search Terms

These days, it’s a common practice to incorporate a search feature for any enterprise-level product or service. This feature allows your audience to find exactly what they are looking for instead of navigating through a hierarchical menu.

Once your site/app has such a search feature in place, it is relatively easy to implement onsite search tracking and review the top search terms being entered by your users.

Creating content around such search terms can both add tremendous value to your customers and increase conversions for your products. With relevant content strategically made available to your users, you may also notice a relative drop in the overall time for conversion.

How to Track Onsite Search Terms

To track site search, you can turn on site search tracking on Google Analytics under the View Settings.

6. Site Speed

A few years ago, a website that loads fast may have been a nicety, but these days it’s a necessity. It is common for users to abandon a site and seek out alternatives when site speed is relatively slow.

Having baseline benchmarks for site speed and improving upon such metrics not only makes your content accessible to users at speed but also plays a key role in improving your content’s organic ranking in Google’s search results.

A few metrics to take into account with respect to site speed:

• Page interaction time: This measures how quickly users are able to interact with a webpage while any background content, media, and scripts may still be loading.
• Page load time: This is the average time it takes to load a web page. This metric is based on the samples collected via google analytics and other tracking tools.

How to Track Site Speed

There are multiple tools available online, such as PageSpeed Insights and Lighthouse, to measure site speed and gather insights on any adjustments that can be made to improve your overall page load time. It is a good practice to execute site speed tests on your site periodically and prioritize site speed as a core metric.

Below is a report from PageSpeed Insights.

At Portent, we perform page speed audits periodically for our clients, and you can contact us to learn more about our process.

Wrap Up

The six metrics above are particularly important to provide visibility and insights into your digital marketing campaigns. They are a great place to start and it’ll be interesting to see what new metrics become available in the future. I hope these six metrics can help you make data-driven decisions for your marketing strategies.

The post 6 Internet Marketing Metrics You Must Track (and How) appeared first on Portent.

At Portent, we pride ourselves on being passionate learners and expert teachers. So much so that it’s written into our core values:

• Superior Communication
• High Emotional Intelligence
• Intellectual Curiosity
• Fearless Accountability
• Teach the Shit out of Everything
• Service

That means we read, listen, and watch a lot of content about our craft to learn, consider, and ultimately apply what’s pertinent to our work.

There’s never been more content online to consume than there is today. But this endless opportunity is both a gift and a curse. The low barrier required for content creation cultivates a landscape with a very small percentage of unique, compelling content to read. Most of the content created today is fluff. It’s regurgitated and broadly generic – some readers may feel like this post fits into that category. That’s fine 🙂

This list focuses specifically on where we go online to read about the latest in digital marketing. While there are tons of great Twitter follows, podcasts, courses, video channels, and conferences to keep close tabs on, this post would be impossibly long if we included all of those as well. That’s for another post at another time.

Where We Go to Read About Digital Marketing

This list isn’t exhaustive, and it’s not meant to be. When we sat down and looked at where we’re consistently learning new things that impact our craft, these are the places that stood out the most.

#GTMTips from Simo Ahava

Simo solves specific Google Tag Management problems with clear and actionable step-by-step guides. If you’re responsible for GTM in your role, Simo provides great resources.

Media Post – Search & Performance Marketing Daily

Media Post publishes a ton of content every day. The Search & Performance Marketing Daily focuses on overarching trends impacting the industry and doesn’t dive too deep into the weeds.

Nielsen Norman Group

Our go-to spot for all things user experience.

Occam’s Razor from Avinash Kaushik

We wish Avinash posted more! His archives have so many fruitful lessons surrounding marketing analytics and analysis– this is a required follow for us.

Search Engine Roundtable

The most technical of the search engine publishers, The Daily Search Forum Recap provides an easy way to stay up to speed on what Google is up to and how marketers should maneuver.

Search Engine Land

Search Engine Land spreads out over just about every facet in our marketing landscape. A solid publisher worth following to get a consistent perspective across the marketing stack.

Social Media Today

Our top pick to stay up-to-the-minute on all things social marketing.

SparkToro

Headed by Rand Fishkin, SparkToro’s blog is a must for all marketers. Some content will quietly showcase the power of SparkToro’s tool, but the best content on the blog challenges our industry’s accepted assumptions with strong and sound research.

The Moz Blog

The Moz Blog consistently brings thoughtful and well-produced content on all things organic a couple of times a week. Writers from both inside and outside of Moz create a strong balance of perspective.

The Unbounce Conversation Intelligence Blog

While difficult to characterize a point of focus for Unbounce’s blog, we love their content. UX, CRO, branding, design, and some paid media paint the areas of subject matter expertise shared.

The Portent Blog

I would be remiss not to highlight the Portent blog in this post. The Portent blog is where we contribute our expertise to the digital marketing industry. It’s where we fulfill part of our ethos to teach. We hope you find our teachings as unique and compelling as the resources shared above.

Wrap Up

Whether you’re just getting started in marketing or a seasoned professional hoping to cull your way-too-long list of content streams that blend together, this is the place to start. These blogs and resources will take you a long way in staying up to date with unique and compelling writing about the digital marketing industry.

The post Our Short List of the Digital Marketing Writing You Should Regularly Pay Attention To appeared first on Portent.

It’s a terrible feeling when you get excited about an idea, and your boss turns it down. It’s the worst. This happens far too often to marketers, so in this article, I’m going to talk about how you can use traffic predictions as a way to get buy-in from your boss for content development.

For full transparency, I’m not a data scientist, nor do I claim to be a mathematical genius who can guarantee that this forecast will be the most accurate, but that’s okay. Forecasts in themselves aren’t supposed to be 100% accurate. They help set up expectations for all teams involved, and work as a benchmark to assess results. And contrary to what you might expect, you don’t have to be an expert data scientist to create your own forecast. The technique I’m going to show you below is so simple that anyone with access to the tools I mention can do it.

Throughout this article, we will do keyword research, gather CTR data, categorize our ideas, and use excel formulas. Let’s dive in.

Why Traffic Predictions Can Help You Get a Buy-In

To get buy-in from stakeholders, you have to show them what the return on investment will be. We know that organic content will take time to see results, so how can you show your stakeholders the benefit of your content upfront? You can forecast how it will perform. It will be much easier for your stakeholders to say yes to your proposed content when they can see the potential traffic it could bring in.

In my example below, I will be using “organic sessions” to build my forecast as that is a common key performance indicator (KPI) for my clients. But each business is different, so when creating your own forecast, you should use whatever KPI works best for your business. With that in mind, let me walk you through how I show my stakeholders the possible return on investment for content development.

How To Forecast Organic Traffic Growth

For the purpose of this article, I’m going to pitch a strategy to create dog training articles. Let’s assume I’m working on one of your favorite dog websites that want to be a thought leader for ‘dog training.’

To forecast the organic traffic growth for these proposed dog training articles, I’m going to need to do keyword research, group keywords into topics, forecast positions and SERP CTR, and then we pitch! Additionally, you can include possible conversions and attach a dollar sign to your findings if you have access to your business conversion rate.

Before we get started, it’s important to remember that forecasting isn’t accurate, and there are many ways to do it. The process we’re going to use in this article isn’t the best way to forecast; it’s simple math and is not statistically sound. But it will drive your point and help you get the buy-in you need to start showing results.

Step 1: Conduct Keyword Research

Time to get your hands dirty and start looking for the keywords you’re going to target. I know I want to write about dog training, so I’m going to find something along those lines. Take a stab at it, and do your own keyword research. You’ll need to gather the keyword and search volume for this forecast.

I like to Google my way around, but when I need some additional ideas, I use Ahrefs Keyword Explorer to help me out. When I was looking for keywords around dog training ideas, I started by searching for the common tricks I could think of. When I added “roll over” into Ahrefs Keyword Explorer I got other keywords like “how to teach a dog to roll over” and “how to teach a dog to roll.”

After some keyword research, I came up with some of the following keywords.

Step 2: Group Keywords into Topics

Now that you’ve got yourself a list of keywords from your keyword research, it’s time to group those keywords into your target landing page. You may find yourself only having one keyword per page or multiple of them. In this step, we want to think ahead and make sure that we bundle up the same search intents by keyword.

Using my keyword research example, I came up with four training articles: roll over, lay down, shake, and name recognition.

Step 3: Estimate Position Change from Published Date

Once you publish your content, you’ll have to wait for it to rank. It probably won’t rank after one day, three months, six months, or even a year. Maybe it will but the ranking isn’t just dependent on how good of a piece of content you create. It’s also tied to the technical health of your site and your team’s overall SEO strategy. So assumptions aside, the following is a conservative model I’ve used in some of my forecastings.

With this conservative model, we’re assuming that it will take around 24 months before your piece of content ranks in the top 10 for all the keywords you’re targeting.

Here’s how the conservative model would look. On the left column, you have time after the content is published. On the right hand, you have the average position in Google’s SERP rankings.

Applying this model to our example around dog training content, if we published content on “How to Train Your Dog to Roll Over”, it would probably take 24 months for that article to rank on Google within the top 10 positions for the keyword “how to teach your dog to roll over”.

This is a conservative model. I would recommend doing an analysis of the content on your own site and looking at trends. How long does it take your content to rank in the top 10 for your target keyword? Using your own data, you can change the model to best reflect that.

Step 4: Use Average SERP CTRs

Using your keyword research, you know the search volume behind each keyword. It shouldn’t be a surprise that the search volume isn’t the guaranteed number of clicks if you rank #1 for that keyword. Why? Search volume is the average number of people searching for the term. Not every person searching for a term is going to click on position one; they may click on position 10. That’s where click-through rate (CTR) by position in the SERP comes into play. Here’s the CTR I’ll be using for Positions 1 to 100.

No CTRs are the same, your sites may also be different from the one I shared. I encourage you to calculate your own CTR when possible using Google Search Console. To do so, look at your other pages and find the CTR by average position. Moz’s STAT also uses its own CTR to calculate Share of Voice; you can start your own forecast using theirs.

Step 5: Forecast Organic Traffic

It’s time to forecast organic traffic using what we’ve gathered in the previous steps. I like to combine both position change and average SERP CTRs.

Once you’ve got your models set up, we will calculate how many sessions we predict will take place by the monthly intervals we’ve chosen.

Formula: CTR x Search Volume = Predicted Sessions

I used a VLookUp formula that, based on the monthly interval, would find the expected CTR, and then it would be multiplied by that keyword’s search volume.

Once I know the formula works, I’ll copy it over to the rest of the monthly interval columns and keyword rows. Here’s my final table, showing me the predicted clicks from the first month of publication to the 30th month.

That’s a lot of data! We need to simplify it because you can’t speak on predicted traffic by keywords to get buy-in on your content strategy. Instead, you need to talk about it in terms of “topics.” In our dog training example, we found four topics, so we need to show results for each of those. Here’s a quick table that simplifies our data and speaks on the predicted traffic for our four topics.

Using our conservative model, we can predict that after we publish an article on “train your dog to roll over,” we will receive 269 clicks a month by the 30th month. When talking to leadership, I suggest sharing results in an annual format, so the data will be more impactful. For example, if we change our results to an annual format, it shows that the first article can bring in 3,228 organic clicks a year, which packs more of a punch and frames the results in a more digestible format for your leadership to understand.

Step 6: (Optional) Use Conversion Rates

This is an optional step that can help build your case for content development and get buy-in. If the site you’re working on has been tracking conversion rates, then you can find how many of your predicted sessions will convert.

If this imaginary dog website I’m working on has a conversion rate of 3.2%, let’s see how many conversions I could get with my “How to Train Your Dog to Roll Over” article.

Formula: Predicted Sessions x Conversion Rate = Predicted Conversions

Example: 269 x 3.2% = 8 conversions

Let’s say this dog site also sells 1:1 training courses with our trainer. The cheapest course is $120. So with eight conversions, this article will have a revenue of $960 a month or $11,210 a year.

Methods & Tools for Forecasting Organic Traffic

The method I showed you assumes a lot. For example, it doesn’t take into account fluctuations in search volume or keyword seasonality.

If you want to create a more advanced forecast, there are lots of other more complex methods you can use to forecast organic traffic. One of my favorites is Tom Capper’s forecasting model that uses your own site’s historical data.

Another method I’ve been learning more about this year is using Forecast Forge with Google Analytics. I’m not proficient enough to write about it yet, but I’ll update this article once I am.

The Tools I Use

• Google Search Console (GSC) – I use GSC to find the average CTR by position for similar types of pages.
• Google Analytics (GA) – I use GA to get average conversion rates for similar types of pages.
• Ahrefs – This is my favorite tool for all things keywords. I use it for keyword research and gathering the data I need, like search volume.
• Moz’s STAT – Once you get buy-in for your content development strategy, I recommend tracking your new keywords with this tool. STAT will help you report on your progress and see how your content ranks over time.

Wrap-Up

Getting content buy-in from leadership can be intimidating but will make all the difference. While you probably already know that your content development strategy will be good for the business, your stakeholders are probably less familiar with content strategy and don’t automatically understand the value of content development. So being able to forecast the organic traffic your business could gain by implementing your content strategy will solidify that value for your boss, leadership, or stakeholders.

The post How to Forecast Organic Traffic and Get Buy-in for Content Development appeared first on Portent.

The benefits of refreshing or rewriting old blog posts to breathe new life into a website are well-established and include more traffic, new backlinks, and improved keyword rankings.

Consequently, content recycling is among the most popular content strategy and SEO trends for bloggers, with 71% reporting they refreshed old articles in 2021, an 18% increase since 2017, according to Orbit Media’s 2021 blogging statistics report.

The surging popularity of blog refreshes got me wondering: how much effort should you put into updating blog content, and what type of updates do search engines reward the most?

Keep reading to nerd out about the study background, my analysis method, and the findings. If you want to delve into my actionable takeaways, skip to the “What the Results Mean for Blog SEO and Keyword Strategy” section.

Study Background

There are many ways to refresh a blog post and each tactic requires different resources and effort. But is there one strategy that surpasses all others?

If you ask this question to 100 content marketers, I suspect most people will answer “no” and then give you one of two options to explore (depending on your article’s performance):

1. Rewrite the entire blog post using SEO best practices and competitive research.
2. Keep things simple and only update the information necessary to compete with the content that outranks your article.

I’ve followed and prescribed those two tactics for years. And while most refreshed blog posts perform better when compared to the original version, the improvements are often inconsistent.

The inconsistency is also observable in published studies about the value of updating blog content. Authors try different strategies and (unsurprisingly) get different results.

For example, Backlinko’s content update experiment yielded 260% more organic traffic, while HubSpot’s similar study shows a 106% organic traffic increase.

To solve this disparity, I wanted to figure out what makes Google’s algorithms tick when they notice updated content.

Study Methodology

To quantify how Google treats content updates, I collected 60 of Portent’s blog posts, divided them into three groups, and applied a different update severity to each cluster.

I think organic traffic is a misleading metric for this type of study because it relies on user behavior and doesn’t truly measure how valuable search engines find the updated content.

Instead, I used Ahrefs’ batch analysis tool to track keyword growth (ranking position 1-100), first-page rankings (position 1-10), backlinks (linking domains), and SERP features. I believe these metrics are universal and better represent Google’s opinion rather than ever-fluctuating user behavior.

I measured keyword growth for each blog post in one-month intervals, starting on the date the blog post was updated and ending two full calendar months after the update.

For this experiment, I separated content into three update types:

1. High-effort blog post rewrites
2. Medium-effort updates
3. Low-effort updates

Let’s break down what each classification entails.

High Effort

In 2021, Portent’s team rewrote more than 30 outdated or underperforming blog posts, often from scratch. I randomly chose 20 of the updated articles for this study.

These articles were worked on and republished throughout the year. The writing process involved:

• New keyword research
• Refining, modernizing, or adding information
• Adding supplemental graphics (when possible)
• Creating new internal links
• Updating the title tags and meta descriptions
• Occasionally rewriting the blog post title (H1)
• Updating the publish date

Depending on the author, the blog posts took anywhere from four to 10 hours to refresh.

Medium Effort

You don’t need to overhaul every blog post with a complete rewrite. Sometimes, you need a quick tune-up with annual maintenance to keep your evergreen content relevant for users.

A medium-effort update generally takes up to a few hours to gather new research and purge outdated information. Because this process is reasonably quick, you can update dozens of old blog posts per week.

To reflect these medium-effort updates, I randomly selected 20 of Portent’s blog articles published before January 1, 2021.

I then updated each article and republished them on January 31, using WordPress to manually assign each post a randomized publish date between January 1, 2022, and January 25, 2022.

Twelve of the blog posts received a new:

• Title tag
• Meta description
• Blog post title (H1)
• Introduction
• Publish date

The remaining eight blog posts got an updated:

• Title tag
• Meta description
• Blog post title (H1)
• Publish date

Low Effort

Sometimes you have an evergreen blog post that doesn’t need to get updated to be relevant, but you’re losing rankings compared to newer content.

So, what can you do to make users and search engines believe you’ve added new, valuable content to your old blog posts — even if you didn’t?

The simplest method I thought of is updating the “published on” date, which I did for the remaining 20 blog posts. Once again, these blog posts were randomly selected from Portent’s blog and were initially published before January 1, 2021.

I again used WordPress to modify the publish date to a random date between January 1, 2022, and January 25, 2022.

However, I didn’t touch a single word of the post or update any metadata. The only alteration was the publish date. Each update took about three minutes.

Study Findings

In this study, I wanted to unearth evidence that shows whether Google prefers completely rewritten blog posts or minor, less significant updates.

My two hypotheses:

1. If Google prefers high–quality, high-effort content, then the 20 blog post rewrites will earn more keywords, first-page rankings, and SERP features than medium and low-effort updates.
2. If Google prefers high-quality content, then the low-effort updates will have minimal impact on keyword rankings.

The results surprised me.

Result: High-Effort Blog Post Rewrites

The rewritten blog posts earned an average keyword growth of 454%. One of the posts also earned a shared featured snippet, and the update group cumulatively gained 18 first-page rankings.

However, the results are not as impressive as they sound.

Fifteen of the 20 blog posts started with fewer than six ranking keywords. Of those 15, four posts earned no keyword rankings within two months of the published rewrite, staying at zero.

However, three of these posts netted more than 1,000% keyword growth.

• What is a Quality Score: 0 to 31 keywords
• 6 Ways to Optimize ECommerce Facebook Ads: 2 to 27 keywords
• YouTube Best Practices: 1 to 15 keywords

If you remove these high-percentage outliers, the remaining results are more humble, with an average keyword growth rate of 196%.

What fascinates me the most about the high-effort findings is how the keyword growth changed after several months passed.

Because these posts were updated as part of Portent’s regular inbound marketing strategy, I have access to significantly more data than the 40 posts I updated explicitly for this study.

The biggest shocks are two blog posts that started with no keywords and earned no keywords two months after the rewrites were published. Once I expanded the data timeline, I discovered that both articles gained a significant number of keywords four to five months after the updated versions were published.

• How to Create a Google Ads Remarketing Campaign: 0 to 131 keywords, all 131 terms gained five months post-update. The article also gained 21 keywords ranking in the first-page results.
• Google Display Ads: Specs and Best Practices: 0 to 236 keywords, 130 keywords earned four months after the update. The article also got three keywords ranking in the first-page results.

With long-term data, I also saw 13 blog posts earn more keywords than they began with and seven posts that lost keywords over time. The posts that earned and maintained first-page rankings also changed, with the final cumulative total of 40 keywords in the top-10 positions.

Result: Medium-Effort Blog Post Rewrites

Updating the title, metadata, publish date, and introduction earned this batch of 20 blog posts an average keyword growth of 1,081%. The posts also got five featured snippets, an image pack, and 38 cumulative first-page rankings.

Like the full rewrite section, there are five outlier cases that skew the data.

• How to Easily Perform a Social Media Audit: 2 to 106 keywords
• How to Measure User Intent with Google Analytics: 0 to 20 keywords
• LinkedIn Advertising: How to Create a B2B Campaign: 0 to 39 keywords
• How Often Should You Perform a Content or Blog Audit: 1 to 61 keywords
• How to Develop the Best Content Marketing Strategy: 11 to 160 keywords

After removing these high-percentage outliers, the remaining pages earned an average keyword growth rate of 211%.

The results from this group are fantastic compared to the effort I put forth in updating the posts. Some updates were tiny, took 10-30 minutes, and had huge gains. Let’s look at two examples.

First up is the post How Many Keywords Should You Track for SEO in 2022. Portent first published the article on June 25, 2019. As of January 31, 2021 (the day of my updates), the post had 118 keywords, 17 first-page rankings, and two People Also Ask answers. Here are the changes I made to this post:

• Old Title (H1): How Many Keywords Should You Be Tracking?
• New Title (H1): How Many Keywords Should You Track for SEO in 2022?
• Old Title Tag: How Many Keywords Should You Be Tracking? – Portent
• New Title Tag: How Many Keywords Should You Track for SEO in 2022? | Portent
• Old Meta Description: You need to track keywords to help measure your SEO efforts, so how many do you need? Follow our simple formula to get started.
• New Meta Description: You need to identify and track keywords to help measure your SEO efforts. So, how many keywords do you need to track? Follow our simple formula to get started.
• New Publish Date: January 2, 2022.

The results for five minutes of effort are outstanding. On March 31, 2022 the blog post ranked for 448 keywords, a 279% increase, and gained five featured snippets. It did lose one first-page ranking and both People Also Ask answers, but five featured snippets are a much more valuable reward.

For the second example, let’s look at the post How to Build a Brand Voice & Tone Style Guide. Portent originally published the article on August 17, 2017. As of January 31, 2021, the post had 13 keywords and no first-page rankings. Here are the changes I made to this post:

• Old Title (H1): Why You Need a Voice and Tone Guide. Plus, 2 Exercises to Create One
• New Title (H1): How to Build a Brand Voice & Tone Style Guide
• Old Title Tag: Why You Need a Voice and Tone Guide. Plus, 2 Exercises to Create One – Portent
• New Title Tag: How to Build a Brand Voice & Tone Style Guide | Portent
• Old Meta Description: Understanding your brand’s voice and tone is crucial to connecting with your audience. Use these exercises to create a Voice and Tone Guide.
• New Meta Description: Understanding your brand’s voice and tone is crucial to authentically connect with your audience. Use these exercises to create a Voice and Tone Guide.
• New Publish Date: January 17, 2022.

I also rewrote the introduction to condense seven paragraphs into two. I encourage you to view the original version of this post via Archive.org and compare it against the updated article.

I spent about 30 minutes updating this blog post. And the results are off to a phenomenal start. On March 31, 2022 the blog post ranked for 134 keywords, a 930% increase, and earned two first-page rankings.

Result: Low-Effort Blog Post Rewrites

Updating the publish date earned these 20 blog posts an average keyword growth of 475%, with only two outliers. Plus, the articles also earned 45 cumulative first-page rankings, two featured snippets, and one People Also Ask answer.

The two outliers are also less egregious than the high or medium-effort updates.

• How To Choose a Domain Name – An SEO’s Guide: 1 to 22 keywords
• SEO for Small Business – The Topics, Tactics & Tools: 1 to 47 keywords

After removing these high-percentage outliers, the remaining pages earned an average keyword growth rate of 155%.

The results from the low-effort updates are unnerving and surface two questions:

1. Do users have a bias toward new content? If so, is that a reason Google’s algorithms gave new keyword rankings to blog posts with updated publish dates?
2. Is Google keeping track of real updates to content?

Unfortunately, I don’t know the answer to either question.

While SERP click-through rates are often argued by SEOs to be a ranking signal (despite Google’s denial), many of the blog posts that saw keyword spikes didn’t have keywords ranking in the top 20 positions and thus get minuscule SERP clicks.

And while my suspicion is that Google’s crawlers don’t track before-and-after changes to blog posts, I don’t have any evidence to back up that idea.

What I do know is that under no reasonable circumstances should simply changing the publish date have this dramatic outcome. The information and advice in several of these blog posts is nearly a decade old, with references to extinct tools, features, companies, and marketing techniques.

On the bright side, it turns out that publish date updates are a superb way to game the algorithm and start ranking for significantly more keywords.

However, I encourage you to use this technique ethically because there is no saying what type of penalties or changes could pop up in future updates around this strategy. For all we know, Google may already be looking for large-scale abuse of this tactic.

What the Results Mean for Blog SEO and Keyword Strategy

The results of my experiment present more questions than answers about how Google’s algorithms rank refreshed blog posts. And unfortunately, I still don’t have a definitive answer to my original question: which option is best?

From an effort-to-reward perspective, the medium-effort blog posts performed the best. But the biggest lesson from this study is that literally any type of update can improve rankings — even the laziest strategies I could fathom.

With that concept in mind, here are three takeaways that are worth implementing on your blog.

1. Your Blog Posts Might Need a Visible Publish Date

The low-effort cluster demonstrates that Google’s algorithms favor newer content more than older articles.

I can’t definitively say that your blog post needs a crawlable publish date because I didn’t test removing publish dates as a control. However, the results allude that either search engines or users care a lot about blog article timeliness, which aligns with the Query Deserves Freshness ranking factor.

Having a visible publish date is the easiest way of presenting timeliness, so I believe it’s a useful feature for any blog.

2. Refresh Your Blog Post Title, Metadata, and Publish Date Annually

The results from solely updating a blog post’s title (H1), metadata, and publish date astonished me.

Although my sample size, eight posts, doesn’t reach statistical significance, the average keyword growth after two months is 761%.

The most significant improvement came from the post How to Easily Perform a Social Media Audit in 2022, which started with two keywords and ended with 106, a 5,200% increase in ranking keywords.

Consequently, if you have valuable blog content and you want to maintain organic performance, make sure you update the title, metadata, and publish date at least annually. If you have seasonal-specific content, I’d update that blog post two months before the season starts.

3. Use the Current Year in Title Tags Whenever Appropriate

In the medium-effort update group, I added “2022” to 11 of the titles and title tags. Nine of those pages saw an average keyword growth of 1,665%. Of the remaining two posts, one had no change and the other decreased by 33%.

Of those eleven blog posts, the smallest keyword improvement was 75% (98 original keywords vs. 172 keywords post-update) and the largest improvement was 6,000% (1 original keyword vs. 61 keywords post-update).

None of the blog posts are newsworthy or time-sensitive, and I never modernized the information within posts. From what I can tell, Google or users care a lot about the appearance of timeliness rather than verifying a post has up-to-date or accurate information.

For example, one blog post, How to Develop the Best Content Marketing Strategy in 2022, gained 1,354% more keywords in two months simply by adding 2022 to the title and title tag, rewriting the introduction, and updating the publish date.

Where I Stand on Content Updates

I’m still a staunch supporter of updating old content, especially now that my experiment uncovers it’s hard to lose when playing update roulette.

However, I have a few best-practice guidelines that you should follow to ensure your blog posts are valuable for you and your readers.

Define Your Goals

If you’re going to update old blog content (and you should), make sure you define your marketing objectives first. Here are a few examples of goals I consider when rewriting blog content.

1. What keyword strategy can you employ?

Did I miss a topic if a blog post isn’t ranking for what I want? Did I choose the wrong keywords? Are my title and metadata not using the proper phases?

Are you trying to help your team better understand a new or existing user? Are you trying to gather and distill a bunch of user research into a digestible format?

2. What do you hope the user does?

You need a clear, measurable concept of what success looks like for your project and how user interaction affects that success.

Knowing what you hope users will do establishes project context and helps focus your user research activities.

Provide Value for Readers

This study goes against one of my core ethos for content strategy and marketing: everything I do must provide value for users.

I updated 40 blog posts to trick Google’s algorithm into believing the content is new and useful, even when some posts were a decade out of date. And it worked — arguably too well.

The get-keywords-quick scheme I orchestrated is disingenuous to Portent’s readers. And if you follow my exact tactics, you’ll be disingenuous to your readers, too.

On the bright side, the results confirmed the importance of frequent blog audits to spot stagnant posts and keep your content fresh. Google rewards fresh content, especially when you support a new publish date and metadata with meaningful content updates.

So, instead of performing mass, low-effort updates to your blog content, I encourage you to find useful ways to provide new value to readers. Follow the proper E-A-T rules whenever possible. Give your readers and search engines a genuine reason to appreciate your blog posts.

The post Study: How Blog Post Updates Affect Keyword Growth in 2022 appeared first on Portent.

In the summer of 2020, Facebook began highlighting the Conversions API (formerly Server-Side Events) as a means to give advertisers a direct connection between their marketing data and Facebook Ads Manager. At the time, this was presented as a solution to solve a number of issues advertisers were grappling with, from offline event tracking to browsers that blocked third-party cookie tracking.

However, in the wake of the iOS 14 update and the formal rollout of the AppTrackingTransparency framework causing big changes to user privacy and data tracking, setting up the Conversions API (also referred to as CAPI) has become even more enticing for Facebook advertisers since it provides more reliable tracking and measurement.

You might be wondering, though: “How do I know if this is really something I need to do for my business or for my clients?” If you’re feeling daunted by the process or uncertain about the payoff, look no further.

We’ll walk through everything you need to know as an advertiser about Facebook’s Conversions API.

What Is It, Exactly?

Per Facebook’s developer resource:

“The Conversions API creates a connection between an advertiser’s marketing data and the Meta systems that optimize ad targeting, decrease cost per action and measure results. In the case of direct integrations, this entails establishing a connection between an advertiser’s server and Meta. Server events are linked to a Meta Pixel ID and are processed like web events sent via Pixel. This means that web server events are used in measurement, reporting, and optimization in a similar way as browser Pixel events.”

In short, the Conversions API is a Facebook business tool that helps establish an even more reliable connection between your data and Facebook’s machine learning systems so you can share key web and offline events or customer actions directly from your server to Facebook’s. While Facebook specifically mentions that Conversions API isn’t a means to bypass data sharing policies like the AppTrackingTransparency framework or Europe’s ePrivacy directive, the improved signal strength of Pixel events can lead to more effective optimizations.

CAPI is Your Pixel on Steroids

The Pixel is a crucial component of your ad account. This piece of code creates the foundational connection between your site (a browser) and your Ads Manager, passing back information on user action that gives both advertisers and Facebook’s machine learning systems insights to help inform delivery optimizations.

Over time, though, Pixel tracking (more specifically, browser-based tracking) has become somewhat less reliable as disruptions in the form of cookie blockers and data sharing policies have become more prevalant.

Enter: Conversions API. When used in tandem with your existing Pixel, this API can act as a failsafe for browser-based tracking by tracking events server-side. Conversions API collects the same data on user action and behavior as your Pixel, but it’s stored via your server instead of a browser. The API establishes the connection between that server and Facebook’s server.

Because this process is cookie-less, it’s inherently more reliable than the browser-based tracking advertisers are used to with the Pixel. Plus, there’s no disruption to your current event setup — Conversions API tracks the same standard events tracked by the Pixel. Just keep in mind that the rules of Aggregated Event Measurement still apply.

Why Server-Side Tracking?

Less reliance on cookie-based tracking is a huge selling point for server-side tracking. Here are the biggest benefits of this technology:

• Increased reliability in data collection:
  • The server captures more data than through the browser
  • Eliminates the need for third-party code in browser or device
  • Ability to vet and validate traffic
  • Ability to use postback tracking
• Increased security:
  • Increased reliability in securely hashing PII into platforms
  • Ability to prevent spam/fraud from passing into platforms
• Improved page load time from reduced scripts loading in the browser

Server-side tracking has been buzzy in the larger analytics community since the technology was announced in 2020. In fact, Portent’s Director of Analytics Michael Wiegand touted the benefits of embracing server-side tracking back in December 2021.

Having this context and understanding the mechanics behind server-side tracking is necessary to understand the benefit of Facebook’s Conversions API. By tracking server-to-server, this technology embodies a shift away from traditional first- and third-party cookie tracking in the wake of seismic shifts in data sharing policies that have begun to change the digital marketing industry.

With Conversions API, you get the benefits of server-side tracking coupled with a direct API connection between that data and Facebook. When paired with a Pixel, Facebook highlights benefits like more effective optimization for “offline” events, improved measurement, and lower costs as a byproduct of improved connectivity and event matching.

How Do I Implement Conversions API?

There are a number of ways to set up Conversions API that vary in terms of cost and time investment. Facebook breaks down these options in a helpful comparison chart to help advertisers find the method that makes sense for their organization or client.

Most recently, Facebook released documentation for setting up Conversions API for Server-Side Tagging in GTM. This is the method we’ve chosen to move forward with for our clients as we’re able to lean more heavily on our in-house Analytics team as opposed to development teams that often sit client-side. Plus, we know the components required are typically already in place for our clients:

• GA4 property
• GTM web container
• GTM server container
• GTM server URL
• Facebook and GA4 server tags
• Facebook and GA4 browser tags
• Facebook pixel IDs
• Facebook Business Manager (or someone to test within this tool)
• Facebook CAPI access token

Regardless of the method you choose, be sure to consult Facebook’s Conversion API guide when implementing this tool so you can get the most out of CAPI and improve your ad performance by adhering to best practices such as enabling redundant setups and improving the event match quality score.

Final Thoughts

Setting up Conversions API is definitely a time investment — and, depending on your implementation method, a monetary investment, too. But as the Pixel becomes increasingly impacted by browser loading errors, connectivity issues, and ad blockers, so does campaign performance. By tracking server-to-server with Conversions API, advertisers can count on the more reliable measurement and optimization signals we used to rely on from the Pixel alone.

After the rollout of iOS 14 and the AppTrackingTransparency framework, server-side tracking is more important than ever because it can help close some of the gaps in attribution and performance advertisers have had to grapple with over the last year. While it’s not going to solve every issue related to tracking and performance visibility, Conversions API can definitely help. It’s another lever you can pull to optimize campaign performance and more effectively prove ROI for Facebook advertising.

The post Everything You Need To Know About Facebook Conversions API appeared first on Portent.

Updated on April 20th, 2022, to include current data and insights.

It’s common knowledge that site speed impacts the user experience on your website. But how, exactly, and by how much? Does a slower website mean lost dollars?

Absolutely. Multiple studies, including Portent internal research, have concluded that site speed impacts conversion rate and sales.

We did some analysis based on e-commerce and conversion data from 20 websites and over 27,000 landing pages worth of data.

Research Method

We looked at just over 100 million page views across 20 B2B and B2C sites for conversion data. The critical statistics:

• We took a 30-day snapshot.
• Our page load speed sample size across all websites was gathered from 5.6M sessions over those 30 days.
• Six of the sites were B2C e-commerce. The other 14 were B2B lead generation.
• The sites ranged from major national travel brands to small, niche software-as-a-service companies.

What We Found for B2B Websites

These are our findings when comparing site speed versus conversion rates for lead generation websites:

• Generally, site speed improvement has been flat. 82% of the pages we measured loaded in 5 seconds or less. This was the same as when we ran the study in 2019, before the pandemic.
• The difference in conversion rate between blazing fast sites and modestly quick sites is astonishing. A site that loads in 1 second has a conversion rate 3x higher than a site that loads in 5 seconds.
• The difference in conversion rate between blazing fast sites and slow sites is even more pronounced. A site that loads in 1 second has a conversion rate 5x higher than a site that loads in 10 seconds.

What We Found for B2C E-Commerce Websites

These are our findings when comparing site speed versus e-commerce conversion rates for B2C websites:

• Site speed has improved slightly. 86% of the pages we measured loaded in 5 seconds or less. That was only true 81% of the time when we ran the study in 2019, before the pandemic.
• The difference in e-commerce conversion rate between blazing fast sites and modestly quick sites is sizable. A site that loads in 1 second has an e-commerce conversion rate 2.5x higher than a site that loads in 5 seconds.
• The difference in e-commerce conversion rate between blazing fast sites and slow sites is oddly not as high. A site that loads in 1 second has an e-commerce conversion rate 1.5x higher than a site that loads in 10 seconds. (This could be due to the smaller sample size of pages we had to work within the 10-second range this time around.)

To Improve Goal Conversions on Your Website: Aim for a 1-4 Second Load Time

Goal conversions on websites are generally achieved at a higher rate than e-commerce conversions. A simple exchange of contact information has a much lower barrier to complete than e-commerce transactions.

However, while overall goal conversion rates are higher than transaction rates, the dropoff of conversions is much steeper as sites get slower. When pages load in 1 second, the average conversion rate is almost 40%. At a 2-second load time, the conversion rate already drops to 34%. At 3 seconds, the conversion rate begins to level off at 29% and reaches its lowest at a 6-second load time.

At anything above 5-second page load time, you’re talking about roughly half the conversion rate of a fast website.

To Improve Transaction Conversions: Aim for a 1-2 Second Load Time

1 to 2 seconds sounds astonishingly fast. But when website users are accustomed to fast load time across the web, slower sites are penalized when visitors abandon their cart in favor of a faster website to make a transaction.

The highest e-commerce conversion rates occur between 1 and 2 seconds, spanning an average of 3.05% e-commerce conversion rate at 1 second, down to a 0.67% e-commerce conversion rate at a 4-second load time. After that, conversion rates are all below 2%.

In fact, your e-commerce conversion rate decreases by an average of 0.3% for every additional second it takes for your website to load.

Quick math to further demonstrate this point:

If 1,000 people visit your website to buy a $50 product, this could illustrate the difference in your potential earnings:

• A 1 second page load time at a 3.05% conversion rate results in $1,525
• A 2 second page load time at a 1.68% conversion rate results in $840
• A 3 second page load time at a 1.12% conversion rate results in $560
• A 4 second page load time at a 2.93% conversion rate results in $335

In the span of ~4 seconds, potential sales have dropped by just over $1,190.

Multiply that across more visitors to the website looking at potentially higher-priced products and services, and that results in significant gaps in potential revenue.

Some Pages Matter More Than Others

Hardly news, but faster checkout, login, and home pages matter most. After that, load speed for product category pages has the most impact on sales. All of these pages have high consumer-intent traffic. Make them fast.

How Can I Improve My Site Speed? Factors to Consider

Page ‘weight’ (that’s the total kilobytes transferred, images and all) is no longer the biggest factor in site load time.

The reason? Many sites have streamlined their code by “minifying” their code and using GZIP compression. So the bigger factor, in many cases, is the server and page configuration.

If you want to speed up your site, look at the following elements.

JavaScript Timing

Where possible, put JavaScript src ‘.js’ includes at the very end of your page, defer them, or load them asynchronously. For example, if you use Google Analytics or jQuery, you’re including these scripts in your page from external files. These are ‘blocking’ calls, and your page may not appear to the user until these scripts fully load. If something goes wrong or the script just takes a few seconds, the perceived delay can kill conversion rates.

Use deferred execution if you need to fire the javascript after the entire page loads.

Use asynchronous execution if you don’t care when the script fires.

Resident Portent SEO expert Evan Hall also recommends configuring non-essential Google Tag Manager tags to fire on “DOM ready” or “Window Loaded” to improve page speed. If a GTM tag isn’t critical to rendering a page, see if you can fire it a little later.

ETags and Expires Headers

Other page speed factors are ETags and expires headers. These may sound scary but expires headers, in particular, are easy to set. Your IT team or web host will know what to do.

These two settings help reduce the number of requests a browser makes to the server. They tell visiting web browsers which files to update. If set correctly, you can prevent those browsers from reloading files that rarely change, such as your logo. This is useful for websites with recurring visitors, who do not need to load the page from scratch every time.

Browsers will cache files with far-future expires headers and keep it cached, so the apparent load time is far shorter. And they’ll use ETags to more easily check if a file has changed.

Image Size

Page weight may not matter as much. But image size is still a major drag on load times. Please, compress images.

Run Google PageSpeed Insights on your site. There is a section in this report that provides feedback regarding proper sizing, lazy loading, encoding images, and recommended image format.

Then What?

After that, things get a little more complicated. But not much. Any competent web developer or IT professional can get you set up with GZIP compression, for example, or troubleshoot slow database load times.

Bonus: check out Portent’s Development Architect Andy Schaff’s two-tiered ranking system of page speed optimizations to help you prioritize changes to make to your site.

Easy Wins, Big Advantage

If you’re ready to tackle site speed, we’ve got you covered. Learn the ins and outs of a faster site in our Ultimate Guide to Site Speed.

Other web speed tools:

PageSpeed Insights
BigQuery
Chrome User Experience Report
Measure

Compared to other digital marketing challenges, page speed is easy to address. And it has measurable results. But very few companies do the simple things that make a site fast. The good news is that you can gain a big competitive advantage if you just do the basics.

The post Site Speed is (Still) Impacting Your Conversion Rate appeared first on Portent.

As of last year, 42.7% of internet users worldwide are using ad blockers. This technology is changing the digital marketplace and means consumers can easily bypass unwanted advertising. So how are you supposed to reach your target audience if they can block your ads? You have to go through their peers—the influencers they trust and follow. Now, it isn’t a matter of if you should be utilizing influencer marketing, but rather which social media platform you should get started on.

3 Things to Determine Before Starting Your Influencer Marketing Campaign

Before you determine which social media platform to sponsor influencers on, you must define your goals for the campaign, identify your target audience, and confirm the budget. Completing these steps first will improve your influencer strategy and increase your chances of success.

Step 1: Define Your Goals

It is essential to define your campaign goals before doing anything else. Like any other marketing strategy, where you place your spend is largely dependent on your KPIs. Whether you want to drive traffic to your website, increase brand awareness, or earn conversions (product purchases, free trial sign-ups, etc.), determining your top goal will guide which social media platform to focus efforts on.

Step 2: Identify Your Target Audience

One of the best (and sometimes worst) things about social media is that you can find an influencer for nearly every niche. Whether it be knitting, true crime, or DIY renovations, you can almost guarantee that there will be an influencer in that space. With that being said, it’s important to remember that certain platforms are more popular than others for specific demographics. Identifying your target audience will help you find the best influencers, and understand which platform your intended audience is finding them on.

Step 3: Determine Your Budget

A successful influencer marketing campaign can be expensive. In an ideal world, for one campaign, you could invest ad spend in every social media platform and expand brand awareness, increase site traffic, and earn conversions.

However, this is not the case for most brands, especially those in the beginning stages of their influencer efforts. For that reason, it is necessary to determine what you are hoping to achieve, given your budget limitations.

ABT: Always be testing

No matter what you land on as a strategy, you should always be testing results. Sign short contracts with influencers on platforms you are testing, and monitor your results closely and frequently. What is your cost per view? What is your cost per acquisition? How are your landing pages converting? Only renew contracts that are performing, and let ones that are not, gracefully end. Keeping tabs on your campaigns and your individual influencers is key to being successful in these spaces.

Identifying the Best Social Media Platform For Your Influencer Campaign

Each social media platform has its pros and cons. The outcomes of your influencer campaign are largely dependent on the platform’s demographics and use cases. Read below for insights on Youtube, Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, and Facebook:

YouTube

Youtube influencers will drive the most conversions. The long-form videos keep users on the platform for a significant amount of time, allowing more space for organic, integrated ads. Unlike other social platforms, 78% of YouTube users view content on their desktop versus a mobile device (Hootsuite), making it easier for people to navigate away from the platform and onto your brand’s site in a new tab. This results in much higher conversions.

Because integrated ads are baked-in, permanent, and likely to continue generating conversions over time as new viewers visit an influencer’s platform, Youtubers can charge a lot of money for their ads. Youtube is generally the most expensive platform to begin your influencer strategy on, but it is the surest place to earn conversions right away.

• Demographics: Youtube has 2 billion monthly active users, and its largest age group is 15–35 (Sprout Social). Since it is the second largest search engine, its reach is quite wide compared to other social platforms, both from a demographic and geographical perspective.
• Use Cases: Because Youtube is technically a search engine, consumers use it for a variety of reasons: education, entertainment, live content, etc. This makes the platform an amazing space for niche communities, interests, and product offerings.
• Influencer Ad Example: Book of the Month partnership with “books with chloe” (ad starts at 0:19). Book of the Month is a monthly book subscription service. Youtube is the best platform for Book of the Month to sponsor influencers because long-form videos allow partners to talk through the subscription box and highlight why they are interested in each book. In this example, a bookshelf organization video is the perfect context to highlight new books. Chloe used her video description to share a link to Book of the Month, and her unique promo code for viewers to get a special offer.

Instagram

Because there are many types of content that can be sponsored on Instagram, there are many cost-effective sponsorship opportunities–especially when focusing your early efforts on micro-influencers. Sponsoring Instagram stories or reels can yield incredibly low cost per views (CPVs). This makes Instagram a great place to inexpensively earn brand awareness, especially if your brand is just getting started in the influencer space. However, these lower-cost opportunities are less likely to drive sales.

• Demographics: Gen Z and Millennials make up roughly two-thirds of the platform’s user base.
• Use Cases: Instagram is constantly adding new features, expanding what type of content can be created on the platform. Their shift towards video is helping them compete with TikTok and YouTube, although the three platforms are still quite different. In many ways, Instagram has been developed as a prime space for e-commerce.
• Influencer Ad Example: Superdry partnership with @jackmorris. Superdry is an apparel company. Jack Morris is a travel/lifestyle influencer and is pictured wearing Superdry products. This is a sponsored post created purely for brand awareness. Jack tagged the brand, but otherwise there is no call to action prompting viewers to make a purchase. Instagram is a great platform for Superdry to partner with influencers like Jack to expand brand awareness with simple, easy content.

TikTok

The platform has seen unprecedented growth and shows no signs of slowing down. However, their stellar engagement rates means it’s difficult to pull users away from the platform and onto your website. If your brand can capitalize on the platform’s massive creative pool, then low CPVs and increased brand awareness are almost guaranteed. Depending on the average age of your target audience, conversions may also follow.

• Demographics: TikTok has 1 billion active monthly users, and 25% of them are ages 10-19. 47.4% of active users in the U.S. are ages 10-29, making Gen Z their largest demographic in the states (Backlinko).
• Use Cases: TikTok is all about fast-paced entertainment that capitalizes on rapidly changing trends. It is the most engaging social media platform with an average session of 10.85 minutes (Backlinko).
• Influencer Ad Example: e.l.f. cosmetics partnership with @brittany_broski. e.l.f. cosmetics combined influencer marketing and reusable sounds to create the perfect TikTok campaign. The cosmetic company commissioned a song “Eyes. Lips. Face.,” after their brand name’s acronym, and used influencers like Brittany to release it. This idea capitalizes on lip-synching trends and hashtags in TikTok, and encouraged others to create their own content using the same sound and #eyeslipsface hashtag, generating over 9 billion views to date. This viral campaign had no call to action driving users to purchase a specific e.l.f. product, but launched the brand’s name organically across the platform.

Twitter

Similar to Instagram and TikTok, Twitter is fast-paced and the content is fleeting. With that said, Twitter is ripe with Industry thought leaders and micro-influencers. Partnering with them can earn your brand trustworthy reviews and brand awareness. Furthermore, Google’s algorithm identifies Twitter activity as “social signals,” and utilizing influencers to generate a discussion about your brand can improve your site’s domain authority (DA) and increase traffic.

Partnering with Twitter influencers on a small scale can be a great place to get started with your brand’s influencer strategy to increase awareness at a low cost (Twitter is by far the least expensive way to spend your influencer advertising dollars).

• Demographics: Twitter is the smallest and most stagnant platform in terms of growth. 42% of their users are 18-29. One-third of their users are college-educated, and make more than $75k annually (Sprout Social).
• Use Cases: Considering their user demographic, it makes sense that Twitter remains a space for users to discuss events and breaking news, drive global discussions, and share content.
• Influencer Ad Example: Disney Plus partnership with @MomsMagnificient. Disney Plus partnered with Mommy blogger and micro-influencer Robyn Davis to promote the new Cheaper By The Dozen release. This was an inexpensive way to expand awareness of the release, and reach other their target audience. Twitter was the perfect platform for Disney to reach young parents, and inexpensively promote the new movie.

Facebook

Facebook is the best platform for brand’s trying to reach an older audience. Compared to Instagram or Twitter, Facebook is conducive to longer posts that can explain more complex products or services. Links can be embedded into posts making the platform useful for both brand awareness and product conversion campaigns.

• Demographics: 58.8% of internet users worldwide use Facebook. Over one-third (36%) of Facebook’s audience is 45 or older, and it is the favorite social platform of people ages 35 – 44 (Hootsuite).
• Use Cases: In the United States, Facebook is primarily used to maintain contact with friends and family (Statista).
• Influencer Ad Example: Flex Seal partnership with Reed Timmer Extreme Meteorologist. Flex Seal is a sealing solution company that partnered with extreme weather meteorologist, Reed Timmer, to promote their flex tape product. Facebook is the best platform for Flex Seal’s influencer campaign because they are likely trying to reach an older audience, and the unlimited character limit allows creators like Reed to provide a lot of context regarding his use of their Flex Tape product.

Wrap Up

Developing an influencer marketing strategy can be intimating–the options are seemingly endless. However, beginning with the proper steps and strategies can set your brand up for sustained success. Knowing your campaign goals, target audience, and budget will narrow down which social media platform you should sponsor influencers on in order to maximize results. As your budget and expertise grow, it is recommended to broaden your efforts across each platform to capitalize on their individual benefits.

The post How To Choose Which Social Media Platform For Your Influencer Marketing Campaign appeared first on Portent.

Automation in search engine marketing is ever advancing, especially when it comes to your campaign’s bidding strategy. Google smart bidding has been around since 2016 and has continuously improved over the years to become even smarter and more effective at driving your business goals.

Let’s dive into what smart bidding is, how it compares to other bidding strategies, and break down smart bidding’s pros and cons so you can decide which strategy is worth your time and effort.

What Is Smart Bidding?

Smart bidding strategies use advanced machine learning and auction-time bidding to optimize your campaign(s) for conversions or conversion value. Google’s smart bidding technology is able to consider when, where, and how much to bid based on the likelihood of achieving a conversion. And it’s able to do it instantly, every time.

Factors (“signals”) such as a user’s location, device, day, and time are all considered to determine what your bid should be in that specific scenario. Also, once the smart bidding algorithm has gathered enough data, it can automatically place bid adjustments (increased or decreased) on those signals to optimize your campaign toward the conversion actions you’ve set and are most valuable to you.

These strategies are a solid option for your search campaigns, and they’re equally as effective in improving performance for other types of campaigns. If your business goals include increasing sales, leads, or return on ad spend, then you should consider using these strategies. Because these strategies are geared toward optimizing conversions, you will need to ensure that conversion tracking is set up.

Types of Smart Bidding Strategies

• Maximize Conversions: This strategy optimizes your bids toward the conversions you’ve set up as the primary conversion actions you would like a user to take. This could be filling out a form or making a purchase. This option tries to make use of your entire budget, so you could see a spike in spending after making the switch.
• Maximize Conversions w/ TCPA (target cost-per-conversion): You’re able to set a target amount you’re willing to spend per conversion. Google will still try to get the maximum amount of conversions possible with your budget and attempt to stay within your target CPA.
• Maximize Conversion Value: Google will try to get you the most revenue from your conversions possible for the overall budget you’ve allocated to your campaign.

• Maximize Conversion Value w/ Target ROAS (return-on-ad spend): Similar to TCPA, this option lets you set the goal return on ad spend you would like.

Bidding Options: Smart vs. Automated vs. Manual

“Wait a minute! Smart bidding sounds pretty automated. What’s the difference?” Glad you asked! There are other “automated” and “manual” options. Let’s start with automated.

Automated Bidding

Smart bidding is technically a sub-category of automated bidding. Think about it like every square is a rectangle but not every rectangle is a square. Smart strategies are part of the automated strategies family, but not all automated strategies are “smart.”

The goals for other automated strategies are increasing website traffic/visits (clicks) and ad visibility (impressions). Automated strategies (smart or not) ease the burden of you trying to factor in all the possible signals to optimize campaigns to meet your business goals. It is impossible for any human to replicate the accuracy, swiftness, and efficiency that an automated bidding strategy is capable of.

Types of Automated Strategies

• Maximize Clicks: This strategy tries to get you as many clicks as possible (drive traffic to your website) within your allocated budget. It’s also a good option to start with for new campaigns that don’t have enough conversion data for max conversions and can switch once enough data is collected.
• Target Impression Share: The goal of this strategy is to improve the visibility of your ads. When setting this up, you indicate where you want your ad to appear (absolute top of the page, top of the page, anywhere on the page) and the percentage of the time you would like it to appear there.

Manual Bidding

Now let’s dive into manual bidding. Just as it sounds, this strategy requires some manual labor with a side of digit dexterity on your part. You set the max you’re willing to spend per click (CPC) for your keywords, whereas automated/smart strategies set the cost-per-click for you.

The perk: retaining more control. The pitfall: dedicating the time and resources to figuring out when, where, and how you should be bidding. Even then, you’re not able to make those strategic, in-the-moment, auction-time decisions like smart bidding.

Imagine you have five campaigns with two ad groups per campaign, and each ad group contains 10 keywords. That’s 100 keywords and a ton of auctions. That’s a lot of effort, sweat, and maybe some tears to put forth on manual work when you could be allocating it towards strategy instead. Focusing on strategy is going to help your digital marketing efforts much more in the long run.

Smart Bidding Pros

• Auction-Time Bidding: With this feature, you’re able to focus on other business objectives and goals, while smart bidding does all the heavy lifting. It analyzes a plethora of signals for each unique auction, so you’re always optimizing towards driving the conversions most important to you.
• Advanced Machine Learning: The life-long learner. The algorithms are constantly learning and help predict what’s going to be the most effective way to generate conversions within your budget by utilizing recent and historical data it’s collected.
• Saved Time & Efficiency: Your time is valuable, especially when you’re running a business with a host of other objectives and tasks to keep you more than busy. Even if you did carve out some time to run your SEM campaigns, it wouldn’t be humanly possible to match the efforts of smart bidding.

Smart Bidding Cons

• Lack of Control: There’s always a trade-off. While it’s wonderful that smart bidding takes the wheel for you in certain ways, you aren’t retaining as much control of your campaigns. Smart bidding makes some decisions for you, but it’s still imperative to continuously examine things like the keywords you’re using, what search terms they’re pulling in, and adding to your negative keyword list when applicable.
• Set It & Forget It Mentality: With your campaigns zipping along on a smart strategy, time can get away from you, especially if you’re a business owner tackling this by yourself. For truly effective performance, it’s still very important to keep tabs on what’s happening in your account and adjust where needed. Smart bidding needs you to make it even smarter about how to achieve your business goals.
• Learning Period: This is supposed to last about seven days. However, each campaign is a unique flower, so this could take longer. If it’s a fresh account, you can expect at least seven days, perhaps more. If you already have a sizeable amount of conversion data stowed away, you could have a shorter wait time.

What Bidding Strategy Should You Use?

Like anything else, there are pros and cons to the bidding strategy you choose to use. What’s important is to identify your business and marketing goals. Then you can begin determining which strategy is going to be the right fit. And not every campaign needs to have the same bidding strategy set. Smart bidding automation has come a long way since it first launched and, much like your campaigns, is always being optimized. Whether you’re looking to increase conversions, conversion value, website traffic, or visibility, there is a strategy that can help you do it effectively and efficiently.

The post What Is Google’s Smart Bidding & Should You Use It? appeared first on Portent.

If you have a Google Ads account or any other SEM or programmatic platform account, you are almost certainly using conversion tracking within that platform. Conversion tracking allows you to measure key performance indicators (KPIs) and gives you a sense of how successful your campaigns are at driving results and value for your business.

Traditionally, a “conversion” in these platforms is set up to equal a transaction (for e-commerce sites) or an initial lead submission. Tracking these KPIs allows you to see which of your campaigns are performing better than others and inform your strategic optimization choices. Over time, your optimizations based on this data lead you to acquire more conversions at more efficient costs.

These primary KPIs are an essential part of SEM conversion tracking. However, they are not and should not be the only conversions you focus on.

What You’re Missing Out On

By tracking only your primary KPIs as conversions, you’re missing out on crucially important elements that can better inform your SEM strategy and can drive better overall results. Here’s an example:

1. A user sees one of your ads on YouTube featuring a service you offer. This ad piques their interest, so they click through and explore more about your service and your business. They then leave without doing anything further on that visit.
2. Later, they search for something relevant to that service and see your search ad. They remember your brand from the video ad they saw earlier and click through. They spend some more time engaging with your content on-site — reading your customer testimonials and watching some more of your informational videos — but eventually, leave without doing anything further.
3. Later, again, they search for your brand and click through to your site via your organic listing. On that visit, they subsequently fill out a Contact Us form (aka they submit a lead) indicating they’re interested in receiving more information from one of your representatives.

Under a traditional conversion tracking model, that lead submission would be credited fully to that organic listing, and your PPC campaigns would get no credit using a last-click attribution model (though they’d get some credit using a data-driven attribution model). The key actions they took in the middle step — reading through customer testimonials and watching more of your videos — helped this user move further down the funnel toward their eventual lead submission but received no sort of credit in your SEM platform. As such, those key actions — those signals which can enrich the data your platform is using — are ignored and not taken into account when making your optimization decisions.

This is, obviously, not ideal. Those key actions absolutely helped drive that eventual lead submission and should be given credit for doing so. The way to provide credit is to include these actions, which don’t quite rise to the level of your KPIs, and track them as additional conversions in your platform. These types of conversions are called “micro conversions” or “soft conversions.” By tracking micro conversions, you ensure all of your campaigns are being used appropriately and assist potential customers on their journey down the funnel toward an actual “hard” conversion. And in turn, optimizing your campaigns using both micro conversions and hard conversions can and will help you drive more sales and more revenue from your SEM accounts down the line.

What Are Micro Conversions?

To paraphrase the explanation above: micro conversions are actions that indicate a user is engaging with the content on your site and may be interested in becoming a customer in the future. These actions could include (but are not limited to) any of the following:

• A download of a pdf guide
• A subscription to your email list
• A view of an informational video all the way through
• A noticeably longer-than-average session duration
• A session with visits to multiple key pages on your site

What Metrics Make Good Micro Conversions?

Excellent micro conversions are actions that tend to precurse an actual conversion or sale at higher rates versus your overall average.

If you’re not sure what these events are, you should use event tracking in your analytics platform to isolate common behaviors prior to users converting. For example, if you notice that users who watch a product feature video end up buying the product at higher rates than other people, video engagement would become a micro conversion.

How To Track Micro Conversions

If you want to set up micro conversions to count equally with your other campaigns, the set-up process is identical to what you’re used to for any other ad campaign. However, there may be some scenarios where you want to separate micro conversions from the rest of your lead generation data, so you’ll need to tweak some settings to make these conversions work the way you want them to.

Let me break this down for you. For the sake of simplicity, let’s use Google Ads in the following examples:

Applying Micro Conversions to All Campaigns

In Google Ads, you can create a micro conversion just like any other typical conversion you want to track. If you want your micro conversion to apply to all campaigns, then set it as a “primary” conversion. For example, here’s the relevant part of the conversion settings for tracking a PDF click or download:

Once you set this conversion up with all of its appropriate settings and implement it via hard-coding the pixel on your site or using Google Tag Manager, this micro conversion will count in your Conversions column by default for all campaigns.

Applying Micro Conversions to Select Campaigns Only

Instead, if you want to create a micro conversion that should only count for some campaigns, you’ll create a conversion and set it as a “secondary” action, meaning that this action will not be counted in your Conversions column by default. For example, here’s the relevant part of the conversion settings for tracking session durations lasting 30 seconds or more that I want to apply only to select display campaigns:

Note: this specific type of conversion should ideally be implemented through Google Tag Manager (or an appropriate tag management platform), where you can set the “trigger” to fire only after the desired amount of time on-site has surpassed.

Once that’s created and implemented, I’ll then go into the particular campaign(s) I want this micro conversion to be counted in, and I’ll change the campaign’s goal settings to use campaign-specific conversions versus the account goal settings (default):

How Micro Conversions Affect Reporting

After you create and track your micro conversions, they count in the Google Ads Conversions column (unless you go into a specific campaign and adjust the campaign’s goal settings).

This inclusion is necessary for Google to factor into its bidding algorithms and audience targeting. Setting up micro conversions as secondary actions and not applying them to any of your campaigns will only result in you gathering data for future analysis. If you want your automated bidding strategies and campaign targeting to take into account these micro conversions, they must be opted into your Conversions column data.

As a result of this, your conversion data in Google Ads will be impacted. That means your before and after numbers will not match, nor will they be consistent. If you use the Google Ads Conversions column as a source in your KPI reporting, you’ll either need to manage the expectation of what this data will now show going forward, or you need to use a different data source to track and report on your primary conversion KPIs that maintains a consistent attribution before and after micro conversions are implemented.

Using Micro Conversions To Increase Leads

Now we come to the important part: does the utilization of micro conversion tracking impact your primary KPIs (e.g. lead submissions, transactions)? After all, if more soft conversions don’t lead to more hard conversions – where the potential value for your business is – then there’s no point going through all this trouble.

Here at Portent, we have a B2B lead generation client in the tech space who implemented micro conversion tracking in their Google Ads platform. Using these micro conversions helped lead to not only more of these key actions but directly led to more raw lead submissions. And by substantial percentages!

Let’s look at the data. We’ve recently finished a quarter over quarter analysis to get a before and after snapshot of the impact of micro conversion tracking. As you review these trends, keep in mind that both spend and click volume decreased quarter over quarter.

First, let’s take a look at just the increase in just these key events from Google Ads. In this example, we’re focusing on PDF downloads (please note none of our ads pointed directly to a PDF form):

Tracking micro conversions allowed us to target our users more effectively and acquire more of these key actions. Pretty straightforward.

Next, let’s take a look at just our contact form lead submissions from Google Ads:

Both assisted form fill submissions and last click form fill submissions from Google Ads increased substantially along with the increase in micro conversions. Not only that, form fill submissions that occurred from users who clicked on one of our ads and completed a PDF download increased by more than 1,100% quarter over quarter. This is hard proof that tracking micro conversions and giving those conversion signals to Google not only increased our micro conversion volume but our actual lead volume as well.

Conclusion

Without micro conversion tracking, some SEM campaigns might look like they’re struggling because their CPL levels don’t look as low as others or their conversion rates look poor. This is because those campaigns are targeting users higher up the funnel who aren’t as ready to convert yet. Even if you’re appropriately using high-funnel content in display campaigns targeting users who are just becoming aware of your business, these users are highly unlikely to want to become a genuine lead or make a transaction with you right away.

That doesn’t mean these campaigns are failing – it means you need to track the actual key metrics these campaigns drive so your platform learns what actions and what types of users make this campaign successful. By giving micro conversions the credit they’re due in these campaigns, you can ensure you’re giving these users the right content and CTA’s to move them down the funnel. In time, more of these users should convert at higher rates as they return to your site and engage with more of your content.

Bottom line: By using micro conversions as well as hard conversions in your SEM conversion tracking, you can drive more leads and sales down the line at more efficient costs and rates. Which, in the end, means more revenue and more profit from your paid media investment.

The post How To Use Micro Conversions To Increase Leads appeared first on Portent.

Updated on 3/25/2022 to include the most recent changes to Facebook advertising.

When this blog post was originally posted in 2018, we were bracing for impacts from Mark Zuckerberg’s senate hearing and prepping for what at the time seemed like big changes to Facebook targeting — remember when they shuttered Partner Categories? Simpler times.

Fast forward to the present day, and social media marketers have become pretty accustomed to these types of announcements. As data privacy has shifted to the forefront of many conversations about digital advertising, it’s safe to assume that the industry as a whole will have to continue to adjust to what feels like game-changing shifts in the way we run campaigns and measure their effectiveness.

What’s Changing Changed

Facebook Isn’t Facebook Anymore

Let’s address the elephant in the room first — Facebook, Inc. is now Meta. In October of 2021, the company announced the change, stating:

“Meta builds technologies that help people connect, find communities, and grow businesses. When Facebook launched in 2004, it changed the way people connect. Apps like Messenger, Instagram, and WhatsApp further empowered billions around the world. Now, Meta is moving beyond 2D screens toward immersive experiences like augmented and virtual reality to help build the next evolution in social technology.”

There has been a lot of speculation about the catalyst behind the company’s decision to move full steam ahead into the Metaverse. One hypothesis, though, is an anticipated decline in ad revenue: Meta says that byproducts of the most recent iOS14 update would result in a $10 billion revenue hit in 2022.

iOS 14 and the Introduction of the AppTrackingTransparency Framework

This brings us to the launch of Apple’s iOS 14 update, which rolled out in April of 2021 — arguably the most significant change we’ve seen on the platform in recent memory. If you’ve been running ad campaigns on Facebook in the past year, there’s a very good chance you’re already familiar with performance impacts following the rollout of the AppTrackingTransparency framework.

If you need a refresher, check out this blog post to learn more about the ways iOS 14 has affected advertising on Facebook.

European ePrivacy Directive

Beginning in July 2021, this banner has been a mainstay when editing an ad set that targets European users.

To better align with Europe’s ePrivacy Directive, the most recent update to international privacy regulations, Facebook updated cookie content prompts across the region to include two controls that allow a user to opt-out of cookie tracking by Facebook and/or other companies when using a Facebook product.

Facebook noted that while there was no action required by advertisers, “campaigns targeting ads to people in the European Region may begin to gradually experience decreased performance beginning July 6, 2021.”

Server-Side Tagging in GTM for Conversions API

Facebook released official documentation for server-side tagging in Google Tag Manager last year, complete with the Conversions API tag template. This was big because this implementation meant that Facebook data could be sent server-to-server rather than through a web browser.

If you’re curious to learn more about the advantages of this set-up, Michael Wiegand, Portent’s Director of Analytics, wrote a bit about the benefits of embracing server-side tag management for the blog.

The Facebook CAPI integration specifically provides the following additional benefits:

• It can help you track users who installed AdBlocker or those using Safari (or any other browser with intelligent tracking prevention algorithms).
• It can track events that happen not on the site, such as phone calls or offline sales.
• It enables teams to utilize Conversion Lift Studies after October 2021.

We’ve found that the Conversions API integration has generally been an easy pitch to clients in a post-iOS 14 world, but the ability to implement via familiar tools like GTM has made the process even easier.

Loss of Detailed Targeting Options

In January 2022, Facebook announced that it would be removing thousands of detailed targeting options that could be perceived as “sensitive” — from health causes to social issues.

This is a direct response to some criticism Facebook has received over the years, including a lawsuit from The Department of Housing and Urban Development after allowing discriminatory targeting exclusions in housing ads.

So far, we’ve found the removal of these audiences to have virtually no impact on the campaigns we run for clients.

What We’ve Learned

The biggest takeaway from the changes we’ve seen in the last year? Expect the expected. We’ve been writing about the way public sentiment and legislation around data privacy has impacted (and will continue to impact) digital marketing since 2018 — from the aftermath of the Cambridge Analytica debacle to GDPR to CCPA.

In many ways, the iOS14 update, which has felt like the most catastrophic of them all, probably wasn’t that surprising at the end of the day. The writing on the wall has been there the whole time — what matters now, though, is that we honor these changes while continuing to drive results for our clients.

Now that we’re nearly a year into the rollout of Apple’s game-changing data use update, our team has seen a wide range of performance outcomes across our portfolio of eCommerce and B2B clients.

Positive Outcomes We’ve Seen In Our Client Work

One B2B tech client added Facebook back into its marketing mix after a several-month hiatus in May 2021, just a month after the formal rollout of the AppTrackingTransparency framework. Since then, we’ve seen massive growth on the platform in spite of attribution challenges created by Apple’s update. Conversion volume has increased +1603% YoY, and we see significant improvements in efficiency when comparing current CPAs with historical data in the account.

For one eCommerce client who suspended all Facebook advertising beginning November 30, 2021, the decision to divest from the platform had a big impact on brand awareness and sales. According to Social Strategist Jessica Clark, “when the Facebook ads were off, interest [in the brand] decreased over time by 64% according to Google Trends…Overall users to the site also decreased by 28% and transactions decreased by 24% according to Google Analytics.” This decline in overall performance helped influence the decision to reactivate Facebook advertising in February 2022.

Not-So-Positive Outcomes We’ve Seen In Our Client Work

The trends haven’t all been positive, though. Clark also confirmed that one B2C client has seen CPA costs increase by 78% YoY among campaigns that utilize Lookalike audiences based on pixel data.

Similarly, for one B2B client, a reduction in custom audience sizes has been the primary culprit for a sharp decline in performance among remarketing campaigns since May of 2021. As a result, we’ve seen reach plummet and impression and click costs rise.

Although there has been some improvement in performance after adjusting our creative strategy, combining audiences, and making optimizations focused on improving liquidity, we’ve shifted focus on the platform away from demand generation and instead invested more heavily in LinkedIn to drive volume.

With that said, I don’t think this marks the end of Facebook advertising, nor do I think it’s wise for advertisers to abandon ship just yet. Although Google announced a stay of execution for third-party cookies, the day is still coming. Other massive changes to data use and tracking are imminent, and all advertisers, regardless of channel, will be impacted.

What To Do

The good news is that we have time to prepare! As we saw in some of the examples above, Facebook advertising is still a valuable marketing channel regardless of industry. While some businesses have continued to drive stellar performance with marginal impacts related to the iOS 14 update, the reality is that some impact on results is possible.

Use Conversions API

Get your clients on board with Conversions API if you haven’t already. While this wouldn’t completely solve for measurement and attribution gaps caused by the iOS 14 update, it can help compensate for impacts to signal strength from the pixel as a result of third-party cookie depreciation. The result would be improved accuracy of information sent for targeting, measurement, and optimization.

Utilize Micro-Conversions

Next, lean on micro-conversions to paint a more detailed picture of Facebook ad performance. If you’re not familiar with this concept, check out this blog post from our Director of Analytics to learn more about what makes a good micro-conversion. If you’re interested in setting up these types of conversions without code, you can do that pretty easily by setting up a Custom Conversion in Events Manager. There is a big caveat, though: custom conversions count towards the 8 events that can be configured and prioritized for Aggregated Event Measurement reporting. Although it takes a little more legwork, consider setting up Custom Events via GTM and corresponding goals in Google Analytics for improved visibility outside of the platform.

Flexibility Is Key

Finally: be flexible. As we’ve seen in the last year, the ever-evolving conversation around data privacy shows no sign of slowing down. Platforms are already taking steps to comply with new legal requirements and assuage public outcry. When so much is uncertain, it can be difficult to admit “we don’t know” when clients ask us what to expect after an industry-shifting change like the AppTracking Transparency framework is announced. This presents an opportunity to educate client contacts as you’re learning, too. Whether that means passing along resources from platform reps or sharing the ways performance impacts can lead to new strategic pivots, transparency is key.

Keep these things in mind as we brace for what will surely be an interesting few years in digital advertising.

The post Facebook Marketing: What’s Changing, What’s Not, & What To Do appeared first on Portent.

To begin with the obvious, SEO revolves heavily around keywords. What people search for, how often they search, and how difficult it will be to rank for a target term are all concepts that we consider when completing keyword research. As SEOs, we comb through data, look at trends, and ultimately pare down an unwieldy list of keywords into actionable targets. Identifying what terms to rank for, how they’re currently ranking, and if/how/why/when that changed, is all part of the game.

One crucial aspect of keyword research that is often neglected—or just misunderstood—is that of keyword mapping. Whether you’re new to SEO or an established veteran, the concept of keyword mapping is equally valuable to maintain and convey an accurate understanding of the state of your website in organic search, and how it can be improved.

Read on to learn about what keyword mapping is and how to do it right.

What Is Keyword Mapping?

At its most basic form, a completed keyword mapping deliverable is a spreadsheet that correlates URLs on your site to the target keywords associated with them—whether extant or yet to come. It is a lovely visual representation of these keywords and illustrates where they belong within the pages of your site. Keyword mapping will enable you to create better content, optimize existing landing pages, and gain a better understanding of your site’s organic strategy as a whole.

A keyword mapping document can reveal critical aspects of the site. We’re provided a better understanding of its structure and can better discern priorities for optimization. Take, for example, the image below—this process will illuminate the opportunities in the center of the diagram.

We’ll get into why exactly this process is so important—and valuable—a little later on.

When To Do Keyword Mapping

There are many situations in which creating an accurate keyword map will greatly strengthen your organic strategy and inform your roadmap moving forward. Rather than making the blanket statement that it’s “always a good idea” (which to some degree, it must be said, is true) let’s examine a few more concrete situations:

Keyword mapping to identify new content opportunities:

If you’re ideating new content for your website, you can establish ahead of time the exact purpose of each new page as it relates to target keywords and rankings. Keyword mapping before content creation is also extremely beneficial in identifying content overlap. If a proposed page has a central theme that’s already targeted by keywords on another page, you can either avoid the topic altogether or augment the existing page with new content. There are enough competitors for your site in organic search—you don’t need to play against yourself.

Keyword mapping before a site redesign/migration:

Site redesigns and migrations are often pain points for SEOs. Aside from the all but guaranteed temporary traffic dip, many things can get shaken up when search engines recrawl the new version of your site. Generally, there is going to be some confusion among the bots. Having an accurate keyword map already established will allow you to track what content/keywords correspond to which URL on the site, and enable a more accurate basis for keyword tracking through the migration. It will also allow you to keep your sights on new keywords and develop a long-term roadmap for content generation.

Creating a keyword map for a new client site/never been done:

If you begin work on a client site or are working on your own site’s SEO for the first time, there’s a high likelihood that this process was never done. Furthermore, even if it has, it will likely be outdated. In either scenario, now is a perfect time to create an accurate keyword map for existing pages and better understand the purpose of each page.

Benefits of Keyword Mapping

Benefit #1: Gain a visual understanding of your site’s architecture, and understand the exact purpose of each page
Every page on your website should serve a purpose, or it should not exist. It is obvious, sure, but it doesn’t take much digging to find counterexamples of this principle.

Benefit #2: Communicate better with your content development team
Having a high-level, keyword-oriented database for your site’s pages makes things much smoother when changing hands tidy keyword map can communicate the purpose and expectations of an upcoming piece of content. This is particularly useful when using freelancers, as the map serves as a basic template for the purpose of the page—and contains the most critical keywords that are necessary to be featured.

Benefit #3: Enable better, more accurate reporting
By creating a more granular representation of your site’s pages and their target terms through keyword mapping, you can cut straight to the chase in reporting. You’re empowered to demonstrate a concrete understanding of the keywords most applicable to a website and communicate the efficacy of your efforts.

Benefit #4: Evaluate search intent
For existing content, seeing what queries lead to what pages on your site enables you to better understand how organic searchers interact with your website. Are searchers taken to the best possible landing page for high-volume queries? Would a current target keyword for a page be better suited to live somewhere else on your domain? Is the user given an adequate path down the conversion funnel from the page they’re currently landing on? These questions can be better understood with a proper keyword mapping strategy implemented.

For target terms, knowing search volume, difficulty, and CPC costs are invaluable when developing a content strategy. These metrics can and should be used to determine which URLs to target first, judging from potential return. Proper keyword mapping can serve as a treasure map for new content, and understanding the competitive landscape around your target keywords will only increase the efficacy of your campaigns.

Benefit #5: Identify internal linking opportunities
When we understand every page’s explicit purpose, we can also identify their relationships to other pages within the site, and link to them internally. A healthy interlinking structure is all-too-often overlooked, and benefits user experience (being able to easily progress through the site’s information in a natural flow) and funnels authority throughout the site.

Identify Keyword Gaps through Keyword Mapping

In addition to establishing current head terms and where you’re currently ranking for them, through keyword mapping, you’ll also be able to identify what you’re not ranking for or even just ranking poorly. Identifying these gaps is critical in informing your content strategy moving forward and enabling the creation and/or optimization of existing content—that is tailored to the keywords that are underperforming. For visually-oriented thinkers, being able to see the state of your major keyword rankings (don’t be afraid to color-code or stylize the data in a manner that suits you) can be eye-opening. We often find that clients know what they want to rank for in a peripheral sense, but being able to communicate a clear plan of action to address keyword gaps—particularly as they pertain to competitors—that they may not have even considered can cause ears to perk up.

Find Keyword Overlap & Duplicates

As you undoubtedly know, keyword overlap can be highly problematic. If multiple URLs on your website are ranking for the same keyword (whether intentionally or otherwise), you’re creating problems for yourself. Google, in particular, is picky about including multiple first-page results from the same domain in SERPs; how are you ensuring visitors are taken to the landing page with the highest conversion potential? While keyword cannibalization is less terrifying a prospect than it once was, it is still a severe problem that can negatively impact your organic traffic.

Identifying keyword overlap between URLs is one of the most beneficial results of keyword mapping existing content. Adjusting it accordingly (IE consolidating two pages that rank for identical head terms into one) can dramatically improve organic acquisition. By the same token, you’ll be able to see ahead of time if there’s overlap in proposed or upcoming content—and take action to avoid it.

Streamline Internal Linking

As previously alluded to, a robust internal linking structure is a critical part of any healthy web property. Proper internal linking helps users navigate deeper within the site, funnels authority to otherwise neglected pages, and allows search engine crawlers to better understand the overall structure of a website. By obtaining a high-level view of your site’s keyword rankings and their corresponding URLs, you’ll naturally notice opportunities to link between related concepts. Likewise, you’ll have a visual aid to interlink new content to old where appropriate.

Aligns Strategy & Direction

Particularly helpful when working among multiple or disparate teams, keyword mapping definitively aligns strategy and direction for content creation. A keyword map effectively serves as a compass and keeps everyone on the same page (both metaphorically and literally in this instance). Though strategic opinions may—and at times ideally should—differ, there’s not much up for debate about the selected target keywords and the pages on your site that they correspond to.

How To Do Keyword Mapping

Now that we’ve explored the myriad benefits and advantages of keyword mapping let’s explore a real-world example. Together we’ll go step by step through the process and get you ready to do it on your own.

1. Keyword Research

Depending on your situation, you may be at the mercy of whatever tools are at your disposal. While I enjoy bickering about which of the major tools are best for what, the truth is that pretty much any of the industry’s heavy-hitters (Semrush, Ahrefs, Moz, etc.) will enable you to get the job done here. For this example, we’ll be using Ahrefs.

Additionally, we’ll be focusing on rubber duckies for this exercise for no particular reason whatsoever. A fictional client site—a rubber duck manufacturer—is planning to deploy some new pages with our help that will perform well in organic search. In this example, we’re researching valuable target keywords and mapping them to URLs to ideate new content. Keep in mind, though, that keyword mapping can and should also be done to your existing website (or at the very least its core pages) for all the reasons previously covered.

Let’s start with the highest-level applicable query, rubber ducks, and go from there.

After some light filtering (get branded and otherwise inapplicable searches out of there to open up the landscape), things are already looking promising for our anatine friends. We’re seeing high-volume keywords paired with relatively low competitive difficulty, which generally equates to extremely viable keyword targets.

Explore through relevant keywords, and add them to a list for export (or copy and paste if necessary).

2. Group Keywords by Search Intent

Once your new target keywords are all settled in a new sheet, it’s time to make sure things are as they seem. Perform manual searches for any ambiguous terms, and analyze the search intent. Is it what you were expecting? Could your site provide a viable landing page for the query? If applicable, is there conversion potential? If the answer is no to any of these questions, you’ll probably want to discard the keyword in question. Don’t get discouraged—you can always go back to the drawing board if you find yourself running thin.

3. Sort Keywords by Categories

Once you have everything pared down to a list of viable keyword targets, it’s time to sort them into categories and associate them with an appropriate URL. If you’re focusing on augmenting an existing page, use the live slug. For new content, use a proposed URL as a placeholder—it can always be changed later before production. Let’s see what it looks like now that we have our… ducks in a row (sorry, not sorry):

We are looking good. We’ve identified a clear demand for services that our client already offers: bulk, custom, and colored ducks, and aggregated their total search volumes to prioritize which pages to create first. Note that I chose to include both regional and global volume (our fictional client is international) and CPC, the average price per click of paid advertising. Still, you’re welcome to include/exclude whatever metrics most closely align with your overall strategy.

I also chose to go with a “rubber-ducks” subfolder to house all of the site’s new pages in order to maximize their potential for authority and keyword rankings. But keep in mind that this situation won’t always be this straightforward, and will depend largely on your site’s existing architecture as well as the direction in which you’re intending to take it.

4. Use a Spreadsheet to Plan SEO Strategy for the Pages

After we’ve gotten everything established as a URL (whether new or already existing), we need to flesh out the SEO fundamentals for all of the pages. Again, this will keep expectations aligned and minimize the chances of misinterpretation or poetic license when the content is actually created. Like the example above, this sheet should generally include:

• Page URL and target keywords (ranking = current, mapped = new content yet to come)
• Existing page title (if applicable) and/or proposed page title
• Existing and/or proposed H1 tag
• Existing and/or proposed meta description

Having all of this information easily accessible is a truly invaluable resource. It will go a long way in ensuring the content that’s being created will properly mirror what has been ideated. The document you’ve created is a roadmap for content strategy and SEO, all in the exact neat and tidy location.

5. Analyze For Opportunities

Now that everything is clearly arranged, it’s time to analyze the opportunities that have been unveiled through the process. In this example, we uncovered five unique content/page opportunities, but that won’t always be a viable quantity depending on the resources at your disposal. It’s critical to establish the highest ROI opportunities as stakeholders will generally be receptive to—in this instance, selling in bulk has the highest total search volume and is also an attractive prospect for moving products.

In a different circumstance, maybe our brand doesn’t want to be seen as a bulk dealer and would instead focus on custom duck creation as it’s more closely aligned with the brand identity that we’re trying to convey to customers. It’s important to be aligned with your team to establish priorities and opportunities, but the keyword map you’ve created can do much of the thinking itself. The opportunities are there, and it’s up to you to determine how to proceed.

Final Thoughts

While we feel confident about the opportunities we’ve uncovered for this client, our work is never done. It’s lovely to have a clear roadmap forward and a shareable document to align all team members on the content we’re creating, but what about next quarter? Will these terms continue to be valuable in organic search? What if demand for custom rubber ducks falls off a cliff? Our responsibility as SEO to stay on top of the inevitable movement that will occur and adjust accordingly—keyword maps are a living document that will—if treated properly—inevitably change over time. It’s not something you do once and file away; this is a process that has to be done continuously.

So how often do you need to do keyword mapping? The answer varies greatly depending on the specific site—its trendiness, seasonality, and volatility will all change the answer to that question greatly. However, regardless of the vertical in which the site is situated, (at least) once quarterly is generally a good baseline. This allows you to take inventory of how the previous quarter has performed while planning at a high level the content calendar and SEO initiatives of the quarter to come. This is a process that you can’t do “too often,” but more than once a month should not be necessary.

The post Keyword Mapping: What Is It & How To Do It appeared first on Portent.

Among the biggest mistakes content strategists and UX designers make is thinking they are an accurate representation of the brand’s users.

We all know this self-insertion is a faux pas, yet we occasionally break the rules. The results of such roleplay are simultaneously predictable and untamed. For small decisions, your opinion may resolve without negative consequences. But as the magnitude of the decision grows, replacing the user’s thoughts for your opinions often gives subpar results when actual users get involved.

In every UX design situation, it’s better to rely on input from real users rather than your “user-ish” simulacrum.

Ultimately, we are not users. We don’t think, act, or consider outcomes like real users. The absolute best connection we can accomplish is to empathize with users. And empathy maps are among the best ways to fabricate user-centric empathy.

What Is an Empathy Map?

An empathy map is a collaborative, easy-to-digest visual that represents user behaviors, attitudes, and expectations. Empathy maps are akin to user personas and help UX designers, product engineers, and content strategists visualize what users need and want from a brand or experience.

Empathy mapping is an excellent exercise if you need to crunch a lot of user data into an easy-to-reference chart. The map also provides a “source of truth” for multiple project stakeholders, so your team accurately considers what users actually want rather than what you all think they want.

Most empathy maps are broken into four quadrants. Each quadrant represents a different moment or motivation the user may experience. There are four common labels that can comprise each quadrant.

Says Quadrant

The “Says” quadrant references quotes or common idioms that users say about their experiences. These sayings are usually gathered from usability studies, surveys, or interviews, but they can also be foraged from online research where users naturally congregate, such as social media and niche web forums or chat boards.

Ideally, the statements used in this quadrant are verbatim. Here are a few examples:

• “I’m concerned about my dog getting the right nutrients in her kibble.”
• “I showed up at the store, and it was so overwhelming. There were way, way too many choices and I kinda freaked out.”
• “I loved the profile colors and icons I can choose from.”

Thinks Quadrant

The “Thinks” quadrant conveys the “inner monologue” users have when going through an experience. Use the qualitative data you’ve gathered, such as an interview where the user describes their thoughts while completing a task, to try and get inside the user’s head and determine what matters to them.

Here are a few examples of information that may be in the “Think” quadrant:

• “This form is super annoying…there are so many fields!”
• “Am I just an idiot, or is this app really confusing?”
• “Oh man, that was easy! I’m glad this didn’t take up much time.”

Does Quadrant

The “Does” quadrant is all about monitoring what users do and how they behave. Every action has a reason behind it, and observing user behavior lets you predict how they’ll behave in certain situations or react to certain stimuli.

This quadrant is a great choice when you’ve watched or recorded exactly how your user research subject reacts to situations. For example, if they’re waiting for a website to load, how long before they refresh the page, start to fidget, or switch to a different tab?

Here are a few other “Does” examples to consider:

• Do they behave differently when performing a task around other people than when alone?
• When they talk with people, what attitude do they convey?
• What stimuli or information changes their behavior?
• Do they shop around for multiple options or price, or settle for the first item they find?

Feels Quadrant

The “Feels” quadrant is about the user’s emotional state, which you often determine after completing the “Thinks” and “Does” quadrants. Most empathy maps represent the “Feels” information as an adjective that is accompanied by a short sentence for context.

Here are a few examples:

• Frustrated: the checkout process has too many steps.
• Confused: too many similar products with poor distinctions.
• Anxious: the payment confirmation is taking too long to appear.

Empathy Map Quadrant Variants

Depending on who your users are, what your goals are, and what resources you have at your disposal, the classic four empathy map quadrants may not work out.

Fortunately, there are a few alternative options for you to explore. These alternatives are good options when you don’t have direct access to users or didn’t collect enough data upfront and need to make some assumptions.

Consider the following choices if you need something different:

See

• What people, places, or things does the user encounter or interact with in their daily experiences?
• How can these interactions influence the user?

Hear

• What media is the user listening to and influenced by?
• Whose opinions matter most to them?
• Who do they frequently speak with?

Problems

• What obstacles will the user encounter with this task?
• What might cause a user to abandon the task or objective?

Goals

• What does the user hope to accomplish from this task?
• How might the user feel after completing the objective?
• What actions will users take after completing the task?

Why Use an Empathy Map?

You should use an empathy map to understand your users’ needs and develop an intimate understanding of the people you are designing a product, application, or website for. Empathy maps are pivotal in user-centric design and best used at the start of the design process—after your initial user research is complete.

Empathy maps also have secondary benefits for your organization, which surface during and after the creation process. These benefits include:

• Collecting, categorizing, and distilling user research data into a central graphic
• Unearthing knowledge gaps and missing research
• Laying the groundwork to build full-fledged user personas
• Providing an easy-to-understand source of truth for all project stakeholders
• Minimizing different types of innate or cognitive bias

Empathy Mapping vs. User Personas

Although empathy maps and user personas are similar, user personas are often far more valuable and complex to create. Empathy maps give a snapshot of a user, while a persona dives deeper into who that user is as a person and what truly motivates them.

Empathy Mapping vs. Customer Journey

Empathy maps help you understand how users may behave during the customer journey, depending on what quadrant they are in. However, the tool is distinct from the user journey in design and purpose.

User journeys describe what “next steps” users undergo, while empathy maps tell you what users experience during each step.

How to Build an Empathy Map

Once you’re ready to start building an empathy map, you can use the following steps as a template.

Define Your Goals

The first step in building an empathy map is to define your goals. There are three big questions you want to answer.

1. Whom does the empathy map represent?
You need to determine whom you want to understand and empathize with. Is it a new customer? An existing one? Or somebody who left and you’re trying to win back?

Devise a realistic story for the person based on your brand’s project and its objectives. If your goals require targeting multiple personas, then each caricature needs a unique map.

2. Why are you making empathy maps?
Knowing why you’re investing resources into empathy maps, rather than personas or a different type of user representation, helps keep your team focused.

Are you trying to help your team better understand a new or existing user? Are you trying to gather and distill a bunch of user research into a digestible format?

3. What do you hope the user does?
You need a clear, measurable concept of what success looks like for your project and how user interaction affects that success.

Knowing what you hope users will do establishes project context and helps focus your user research activities.

Perform or Collect User Research

If you haven’t completed (or started) your user research, now is the time to do so. If your research is all wrapped up, then you should gather, sort, and review your findings.

Remember, building an empathy map requires qualitative research, so you’ll need at least one of the following data inputs:

• User interviews
• Social media analyses
• Field studies
• Sales team analyses
• Qualitative surveys

Fill Out the Quadrants

Empathy mapping is best performed as a team. Gather all of the vital team members on the project: project managers, UX designers, content strategists, and developers. If possible, bring on a stakeholder, too. They can help balance the business side of the equation and share insights about how the user’s mapping traits may align with or change project priorities.

Once everybody is present and ready, each team member should consider the questions raised in each empathy map quadrant. Having these questions somewhere visible is always helpful.

Next, match insights from your user research to those questions and write a brief idea or insight in the relevant quadrant. A dry-erase board and sticky notes (or the digital equivalent) work great for this exercise.

For example,e if you notice that your users always share videos of cute animals, that can become a note in the “does” quadrant with the note label, “shares animal videos.”

We recommend setting aside at least one hour per empathy map you’re building. Aim for at least 50 ideas stickied to the map.

After the ideas are established and assigned, go through each quadrant as a team and then refine the ideas into a clean, agreed-upon empathy map. Pay special attention to patterns that appear during your refinement. We recommend having no more than 15 notes or insights present in the final map.

Empathy Mapping Takeaway Tips

Hopefully, you feel prepared to build an empathy map with your team. Remember, empathy maps are design documentation that can guide your team in times of uncertainty and keep user-centric design at the forefront.

Although an empathy map isn’t a universal solution to every user behavior question you may encounter, it’s an excellent tool to predict user behavior, remove bias from your designs and products, and uncover missed research or overlooked information.

The post How and Why Marketers Should Use Empathy Maps in 2022 appeared first on Portent.

Anyone who has had to rewrite title tags for whole websites will commiserate with Google’s motivation for rewriting title tags: too many websites use title tags that are too short, too long, meaningless, irrelevant, bizarre, or just plain missing! No doubt Google saw distinctly better usability metrics when they split-tested this change in live search results.

If this change is better overall for users, Google must be rewriting our title tags fairly often, right? Descriptive snippets do contribute to better search results after all, so how often is Google doing this? We conducted some research very similar to our previous posts about meta description rewrite rate and featured snippet length to find out.

We looked at 1,469,373 URLs from over 32,000 keywords and found that Google rewrote title tags 63% of the time.

This figure includes simple truncation and Google’s more advanced methods. Basically, if the string in the snippet title didn’t match the title tag of the page, we counted it as a rewrite.

That 63% figure isn’t uniform, and it differs according to device and title tag length. Actually, if you write your title tags a certain way, you can expect Google to write them 39% of the time across devices.

Background

Google has been adjusting how our title tags display in our SERP snippets for years now, but the change Google made in August 2021 was huge. Not only is Google now writing the way title tags display more often, but its changes are also more drastic than before.

Previously, Google only had a few tricks up its sleeve to generate usable snippet titles, such as:

• Cutting off text after the displayable text limit
• Cutting off text that’s too long to display, but keeping the brand identification at the end
• Using the H1 tag instead
• Using the website’s brand name for the homepage

Now, Google is synthesizing more aspects of a page to create snippet titles. Google can use anchor text of a link pointing to a page, category or breadcrumb names, image ALT attribute text, and more. Seer Interactive has a good summary of where snippet title text can come from.

Google is also cutting more text out of title tags. Boilerplate text, brand names, text in brackets and parentheses, and keyword stuffing are all common features Google will remove from a title tag.

The net effect of this change is that brands have even less control over how their pages appear in search engines. Beyond the basic annoyance of search engines ignoring the effort we put into writing relevant, descriptive title tags, Google will sometimes display goofy and confusing snippet titles, as Lily Ray has observed in her blog post on the topic.

This development is a huge bummer for SEOs, so let’s take a look into some factors that could contribute to high rewrite rates.

Methodology

Once again, our SEO Fellow and hero/developer Matthew Henry provided the data analysis and API wrangling. We used a list of over 32,000 non-brand keywords that have provided our clients traffic, and Matthew pulled ranking URLs and snippet titles from STAT Search Analytics.

Matthew took the first 100 basic organic results from those keyword rankings, and scraped them for their title tags. If we couldn’t retrieve a page or the title tag was missing, we ignored the URL. We didn’t render JavaScript or try to trick firewalls blocking bots. If a <title> tag was available in returned HTML, we took it.

For rewrites that were truncations, we checked to see if the snippet title was a substring of the title tag. This is a simple check and won’t cover cases where Google truncates the title tag and adds the brand back on to the end. That’s a difficult case to detect, and we didn’t include it.

We tried to look at the most “basic” organic results possible by filtering out stuff like featured snippets. We aimed for the “classic ten blue links” in our dataset.

Snippet Title Rewrite Rate

Like we said at the top, 63% of the snippet titles we checked didn’t match the title tag of the source page.

Our results corroborate the 61% figure Cyrus Shepard found in his research, but they don’t agree with the 33.4% figure Ahrefs found. I don’t think we had the same finding as Ahrefs because their methodology was significantly different in that they checked to see if there was more than a five-character difference between snippet and title tag.

The truncation rate is low on both devices. Since we only checked the simple case, that could mean Google is really good at figuring out what the brand part of a URL should be and sticking it on the end after truncating.

We expected to see very similar rewrite rates for desktop and mobile because Google said their new title rewriting algorithm was based on the page and not the query, but there was an 8% difference between devices. Perhaps which snippet title they use is somewhat dependent on the device?

Rewrite Rate by Title Length

One of the most common recommendations I give clients regarding title tag length is to make sure they are not so long that Google will cut off the end of the tag, and not so short that Google will use some other text. Here we see that title tags between 40 and 65 characters are the most likely to be used as-is in the snippet.

Curiously, Google begins writing most title tags in desktop results after 60 characters but writes most tags after 70 characters in mobile results. Perhaps there is more displayable space for titles in mobile results? Let’s take a look in the next section.

Snippet Title Length

The display limit for the snippet title is governed by pixel width, but barely anyone communicates that way to writers, clients, and stakeholders. Pixel width is like a secret language SEOs use, and character count is a much simpler lingua franca for everyone else.

So in terms of character count, how many hand-written characters can we expect to fit into a snippet title before Google rewrites it?

Our title tags will almost never appear in Google’s desktop search results if they are 70 characters more, but they will appear at a decent rate in mobile results. I think this explains why the rewrite and truncation rates are higher on desktop than on mobile; Google simply has less room to show full title tags on desktop.

So how long should we try to make our title tags? If we want to make sure they are unlikely to be rewritten in both desktop and mobile results, then 60 characters should be our maximum. If we’re only concerned with mobile traffic, then we could go as high as 65 or 70 characters before Google starts rewriting and cutting off our titles.

Title Tag Rewrite Rate by Position

Does Google rewrite tags more often for some positions than others? Google says their rewriting algorithm is based on the page and quality of the title, so position shouldn’t matter much. However, there is a weird trend at positions 1-3 where they tend to be rewritten less often by a few percentage points.

In the first few pages of Google results, the overall rewrite rate is less than the average 63% and trends upward to 64% on page 10. This is probably due to SEOs putting effort into writing good title tags, and the pages with SEO attention are more likely to rank in the first few pages. Search results after page three are so low-relevance they might as well be noise in a lot of cases.

This doesn’t explain positions 1-3, though. Overall, the first basic organic result will have its title tag rewritten 56% of the time. Are those the pages with a lot of time for SEOs to work on them? Or does Google find that their search results are better if they use title tags as-is a little more often?

Another possibility is that STAT doesn’t categorize some unusual search results as such, and they are throwing off the data. We tried to get the most “basic” organic results in our dataset, so featured snippets and other result types aren’t included. It’s something we’re going to look into deeper.

Rewrite Rate by Search Volume

Rewrite rate doesn’t vary much by keyword search volume, but it does show a trend that could be explained by SEO activity.

The nature of SEO inclines many of us to spend more time thinking about and working toward ranking on high-volume queries. Could a lower rewrite rate for high-volume keywords be another result of SEO activity? Or could it be due to the types of pages that tend to rank for these keywords?

Long-tail keywords should have more blog posts, Q&A pages, and overall less conversion-oriented content ranking for them, and those pages do tend to have longer title tags. So maybe this chart is a little column A and a little column B.

Conclusion: Write Relevant, Fully-Displayable Title Tags

The lowest rewrite rates occur between 50 and 65 characters, but I don’t think that is because Google has a special preference for titles that long. Instead, I think Google is reacting to the quality of title tags that we’ve been publishing. Google has to work with the title tags we give it, and SEOs have been recommending that we write titles that are 50-65 characters for over a decade.

If the industry instead said the sweet spot is 40 characters, and we spent a decade repeating that number, then the best rewrite rate we could hope for would be a lot closer to that number. Though on the other hand, we didn’t use 40 characters because it’s not the approximate displayable amount Google gives us. Dialectical, isn’t it?

Finally, based on how we’ve trained Google to display our title tags and how much space they give us, I have to conclude that we should go with the flow to get the most control over how our search snippets display.

With this new data and what I’ve seen over the years, my basic recommendation to get Google to use our title tags is as follows:

• Write descriptive title tags. We’re going to get more clicks and better quality sessions if users know what to expect on our pages and we deliver on the promise. This will also help us rank due to user-engagement signals.
• Minimum 40 characters. Google will rewrite title tags more often if they are shorter than that, and we’re not making the best use of the available space.
• Maximum 60 characters. There is some room for more depending on the pixel width of the characters you use, so confirm that you’re fully displayable with the SERP preview tool of your choice.
• Include target keywords. Google is cutting lists of keywords out of titles, but we still need to incorporate them into the title. Ideally, we should find a way to cover our important keywords and still have readable prose.
• Format the title tag correctly. The small details are still important, and you can read more about those in our blog post about writing great title tags.

Upcoming Research

This is just the first post in a short series on how Google rewrites our title tags. In the next installment, we’ll look more at what content Google uses to assemble a replacement snippet title and more factors that could influence rewrite rate. We’ll also explore when it’s a good idea to ignore the standard advice for writing title tags (hint, Google still uses the title tag for keyword matching, not the text they use in the snippet).

The post How Often Google Rewrites Our Title Tags appeared first on Portent.

Before I joined the team at Portent, I spent years executing landing page tests via paid social media platforms. One paid campaign could contain the same creative and targeting but split traffic to two different destinations. I didn’t know it at the time as a social media manager, but I was conducting a kind of redirect testing (a.k.a. “split-URL testing”).

Conversion rate optimization strategists are all too familiar with the numerous classifications of A/B tests and how they will work best for achieving their objectives for their clients and stakeholders. Whether determining what kind of test to implement or how complex of a testing plan or setup is involved, the redirect test is a vital experiment for digital marketers to know.

What Is a Redirect Test?

Sometimes known as split-URL testing, redirect tests consist of two separate, published web pages. Performance metrics and KPI’s between these two pages are tracked and compared to determine which one had the best lift in desired conversions.

The most commonly used CRO platforms with redirect testing are Google Optimize, Crazy Egg, Optimizely, and VWO.

Why Are Redirect Tests Helpful?

The most crucial result redirect tests have in CRO is which overall design of the landing page was more effective in achieving conversions.

Redirect tests can take landing page designs like the above examples, variants A and B, and provide valuable conversion and engagement rate insights. Once a winning test variant is declared, marketing teams can confidently funnel campaign traffic to the landing page. Designers will also have insight into which of their styles has proven to be most effective.

Types of Redirect Tests

The most common redirect tests involve two final URLs to use when setting up the experiment in your platform of choice. For example, Google Optimize redirect tests refer to this arrangement as a single-page variation test.

More advanced versions of redirect tests will allow you to assign your variation experience to live within a set subdomain or campaign by modifying the original page’s URL and parameters with find/replace or regex functions.

When to Implement a Redirect Test

Redirect tests are essential for testing two different landing page experiences for your visitors. These experiences could be for specific campaigns, traffic channels, or redesign initiatives.

One example of a redirect test could involve testing which landing page converts best for audiences and customers who click through paid search ads. In this instance, the landing page that earns a significantly higher conversion rate would continue to be used in the advertising campaign.

A huge benefit of finding a winning landing page via redirect testing is insight into possible elements of content that best influence higher conversion rates. This learning could help inform further A/B testing for other pages that need content and conversion rate optimization.

Redirect Test Tools

While notable platforms like Crazy Egg, Optimizely, and VWO exist in the A/B testing varieties with redirect test abilities, our tool of choice that interfaces the best with our analytics and paid teams is Google Optimize.

Google Optimize accounts interface well with your existing Google Analytics properties. For instructions on linking your website’s Optimize and Analytics platforms, check out this guide from Google’s Optimize Resource Hub.

Setting Up a Redirect Test

Let’s walk through a general, single-page redirect test that you’ll encounter as part of your conversion rate optimization strategy.

1. Create the Experience

Within your Optimize account’s Experiences, click “Create experience.”

A slide-in feature will appear to assign your test’s initial details and establish it as a “Redirect test.”

1a. Name your test.
1b. Enter the URL you would like to use as your original page.
1c. Select “Redirect test” from the list of experiences.
1d. Click “Create” to continue setting up your redirect test.

2. Add Your Second Page as a Variant

Start this phase of the setup by clicking on the “Add variant” button in your new redirect test’s Details page.

A different slide-in feature will allow you to assign your variant’s details.

2a. Name your variant with enough detail to reference in reporting.
2b. Enter the URL you’ll use to redirect traffic.
2c. Use the preview to verify that both the original and redirect URLs are different addresses.
2d. Click “Done” to continue customizing your redirect test.

3. Add Any Necessary Targeting

Google Optimize allows you to set page and audience targeting for your redirect tests. Since this single-page redirect test already has the correct page targeted, we may focus on specific audiences.

Start this process by clicking “Customize” under Audience Targeting.

You’ll find there is a vast selection of settings to choose from based on audience traits like traffic source, device category, etc. Select any and all that apply to your desired audiences before continuing.

4. Add Up to Three Objectives

Objectives are the conversions on your original or variation pages that you hope to optimize. For example, your objectives may be from goals you’ve set up in Google Analytics. These goals will appear if you select “Choose from list” in the dropdown for “Add experiment objective.”

Alternatively, you can use “Create custom” to add additional objectives based on specific events or pageviews. Knowing which events to use for a custom objective will involve familiarity with how interactions are tagged on your website.

5. Check the Optimize Installation

Your redirect test will require you to use this step in the process to verify that the Google Optimize snippet is installed correctly on the pages you wish to test. Start this step in the process by clicking “Check installation.”

Optimize will then redirect to your variation experience to check the installation of the snippet. Once finished and verified, you’ll see the following pop-up confirmation. To return to the redirect test’s setup details, click “Back to experience.”

Also, note that suggestions may appear as well. Our example pop-up here shows that we may install the anti-flicker snippet for this redirect test.

6. Launch Your Redirect Test!

Now that you’ve set up your redirect test to your liking, the next step is to launch your experiment! You’ll find a click icon at the top of the details page to set your test duration. (By default, Google Optimize tests run for 90 days.)

Click “Start” to begin your redirect test if no other changes are needed.

In Summary

Redirect tests are a great way to compare conversion and engagement rates for two different landing page experiences. Insights from these tests can help inform what designs and layouts will work best for the audiences you want to target. You can design a redirect test in Google Optimize in as few as six steps. Experiments like redirect tests are vital in your success as you continue to grow your CRO expertise and programs going forward. Happy testing!

The post Guide to Redirect Testing: What It Is and How to Implement appeared first on Portent.

This year it was reported that over 10% of Americans use Twitter daily. With those odds, each day that your brand is not on Twitter is a missed opportunity to reach thousands of potential customers.

So, what is the best way to access that unrealized market? Influencer marketing.

What Is a Twitter Influencer?

A Twitter Influencer is any account that has authority in a given field or niche and a significant presence on the platform. There is a space for everyone on Twitter, meaning the variety of Twitter influencers is endless.

What Is Twitter Influencer Marketing?

Twitter influencer marketing is partnering with a Twitter account that engages in your area of interest, and collaborating with them to create brand-sponsored tweets. These can come in a variety of formats, but often include a brand mention and product or service review. Here are a few examples:

Why Your Brand Needs Twitter Influencers

Twitter influencers can provide an authentic endorsement of your brand. Their word is trusted and can directly reach your target audience. If you are a newer company, it is a great platform for quickly and cost-effectively increasing brand awareness. Or perhaps your company has just launched a new product or service. Twitter influencers can be leveraged to provide early reviews to your potential customers.

No matter what stage your brand is in, here are the top benefits of partnering with Twitter influencers:

Earn Trustworthy Reviews

Twitter reported that nearly half of all users rely on recommendations from influencers on their platform before making a purchase. If a Twitter partner genuinely enjoys your brand, their endorsement will be received positively by their audience. Earning a good review by a trusted thought leader in your space is a great way to gain industry authority.

Increase Brand Awareness

A sponsored tweet by your Twitter partner can expose your brand to an entirely new audience. With that said, Twitter is a fast-paced platform, so the effectiveness of sponsored tweets can be fleeting. For that reason, the CPM for most Twitter ad integrations can be significantly cheaper than other social media platforms—making Twitter a great space for inexpensive brand awareness campaigns.

Drive Traffic to Your Site

This goes hand-in-hand with brand awareness. Sponsored tweets can lead to both direct and organic traffic. Google’s algorithm recognizes Twitter activity as “social signals” that can increase your site’s Domain Authority and subsequent search ranking.

Finding Twitter Influencers

Your Twitter influencer marketing campaign doesn’t need to start by paying Kim Kardashian to tweet about your brand’s latest promotion. In fact, it shouldn’t.

The best Twitter influencers are usually those with thousands of followers (often described as “micro-influencers”) who have knowledge and authority in a specific niche and an engaged following. So how do you find them?

Look For Influencers Within Your Industry

Your perfect Twitter influencer might be already following your brand’s account. Comb through your followers and check to see if there are any with a significant audience, then reach out to see if they are interested in a partnership. If an influencer is already engaged with your brand, their sponsored tweets will be a sincere endorsement.

Next, identify common hashtags in your industry. Use Twitter’s Explore page to search for users who are tweeting with those hashtags and see if there are any whom you would like to partner with.

Lastly, use Google to search for industry blogs or publications and identify thought leaders in those spaces. Successful bloggers will often promote their content on Twitter. This is a great way to identify an influencer’s voice and determine if it aligns with your brand.

Use a Tool to Find the Right Influencers

Although follower count is an important metric, the success of a Twitter influencer is especially dependent on their engagement rate. If you want to run a large influencer campaign, it is recommended to invest in a tool that can provide the engagement rates of potential partners.

Here are a few options:

BuzzSumo

BuzzSumo allows you to search using filters to identify Influencers in your desired industry, size, and geographic market. Alternatively, you can search BuzzSumo’s content database for relevant topics to find the authors of top-shared content. For both search strategies, you can rank the results by engagement.

Price: BuzzSumo offers 10 free searches per month. Their starting price for unlimited searches is $99/month.

Awario

Awario is a social listening tool. You can use the tool to monitor your brand and industry to receive a list of your brand advocates and industry influencers. It is beneficial to identify who is currently talking about your brand, and where it happens.

Price: Awario starts at $39/month.

Upfluence

Upfluence is a comprehensive influencer marketing tool that allows you to find and contact over 3 million influencers, track their content, and manage your campaign’s performance.

Price: Price is provided upon contacting their Support team, but expect to pay several hundred dollars per month.

Build a Relationship With Potential Partners

It is important to create an initial relationship with a Twitter influencer before asking if they are interested in a paid partnership. This can be done by engaging with their content and sharing it on your brand’s page. It shows your potential partner that you are familiar with their brand, and value their authority in your industry space. Once this preliminary contact is initiated, you may reach out to them via email or Twitter DM to discuss a sponsorship. When the partnership has been agreed upon, it is essential that you provide the influencer with your product or service for free so that they can share an authentic review.

Tips for Running a Twitter Influencer Campaign

Here are key tips for running a successful Twitter campaign:

• Encourage influencers to tweet in their own voice
• Provide your partner with visual assets to use in each tweet
• Offer a special promotion in sponsored tweets
• Create a unique landing page or promo code for each influencer
• Monitor engagement of sponsored tweets
• Track conversions from the influencer’s landing page or promo code

Because Twitter is a fast-paced and dynamic platform, it is important that sponsored tweets are engaging and include a call-to-action that your influencer’s audience can’t refuse. Approve sponsored tweets before they go live, but encourage influencers to use their creative liberty and tweet in their own voice.

A unique landing page or promo code should be created for each influencer so that they can offer their viewers an extended free trial or special discount. In doing so, their audience will feel like they are getting an exclusive offer by trusting the influencer’s genuine endorsement. It also allows you to track the conversions that your brand partner generates via their sponsored tweets. Keep in mind that additional metrics like page traffic are more easily monitored via individualized landing pages versus promo codes.

The Wrap Up

When managed effectively, a Twitter influencer marketing campaign is an inexpensive strategy to earn customers’ trust and increase your brand awareness. If an industry thought leader genuinely enjoys your product, their endorsement will be authentic and trusted by their audience.

The post How to Run a Twitter Influencer Marketing Campaign appeared first on Portent.

Google’s automated smart bidding options have come a long way over the years. In fact, our best practice used to be to avoid them in favor of more manual CPC management for increased control, or third-party bid management platforms that performed better.

That is no longer the case. Smart bidding is extremely commonplace now and much more effective than ever before.

Still, for years, smart bidding strategies have been aimed at driving KPIs like more clicks, more conversions, or more conversions at a specific cost-per-action (CPA). Heading into 2021, Google made a strong push to change that. To get smarter. They called it Smart Bidding 2.0.

Smart Bidding 2.0 refers to value-based bidding. This is bidding for value…not volume. Not all conversions are created equal, after all.

Implementing Value-Based Bidding

Conceptually, value-based bidding makes perfect sense. Driving revenue is almost always the ultimate goal.

That said, bidding for higher revenue value historically has been reserved for e-commerce advertisers where it’s clear through e-commerce tracking what revenue returned is. Lead generation advertisers traditionally focus on maximizing conversion volume while aiming for a specific target CPA goal.

Because of this, Target CPA and Maximize Conversion (Target CPA) are favorite smart bidding strategies for lead generation businesses. This is because it’s often harder to determine the value of a lead. This is a mental block that should be moved past.

So, how does bidding with value in mind affect performance?

Why Use Value-Based Bidding

As I mentioned, not all conversions are the same. For a lead generation business, there might be many conversion actions to consider:

• Lead form submissions
• Free trial signups
• Ebook downloads
• Whitepaper downloads
• Offline tracked conversion actions
• Or…hard revenue recognized and reported back via closed-loop reporting

When this is the case, a few things can happen. Either some conversion actions get ignored in favor of the primary conversion. This would tell the smart bidding strategy to ignore those softer conversions completely and only seek the best conversions, which will hurt the business over time because those soft conversions do have value.

Or lump them together and bid equally towards all. Whitepaper downloads might be much easier to earn, so Google might go get those, even though they are worth less to the business, decreasing return. An equal bid for different conversion action value can cause missed revenue opportunities.

When to Switch to a Value-Based Bid Strategy

The short answer, now.

The best reason not to switch is if your volume is low. If you have low conversion volume due to the nature of your business, your budget, or because your campaigns are brand new, it might not be time to switch yet. However, in most cases, we recommend using a value-based bid strategy.

How to Switch to a Value-Based Bid Strategy

Value-based bidding is for anyone and everyone at this point. There are very few exceptions. Even if your business is small and has a single conversion point, you can still apply Value Rules (see below) to modify your bids based on how the conversion was completed and who converted.

If your business has multiple conversion actions, all that is required to get started is determining a value for each. This is where the mental block I mentioned before comes in.

“I don’t know the value of a lead.”

This is a common issue, but one that can be easily navigated. It is not necessary to know the exact dollar value of each conversion action you are tracking. All you need to know is their value relative to each other.

If you understand a rough estimate of their value relative to each other, you can make up a value to communicate to Google which conversion you care the most about. For example:

• Free trial signups (most important) – $100
• Lead form submissions (hard conversion) – $75
• Ebook downloads (soft conversion) – $25
• Whitepaper downloads (soft conversion) – $25

Google will see these values and understand that free trials are 4x more valuable than whitepaper downloads. If you can estimate a value like this, adding that to your conversion actions in Google Ads will immediately improve the efficiency of your bidding.

Types of Smart Bidding Strategies

When bidding for volume, advertisers look to Maximize Conversions and Target CPA. But for value-based bidding, the options are Maximize Conversion Value and Target ROAS.

Maximize Conversion Values

This strategy works exactly how the name suggests. Google aims to return you the maximum revenue possible given your budget. It will take into account numerous signals like user location, expected CPC, time of day, and intent signals with the goal of getting the highest return possible.

Target ROAS

Target ROAS, also referred to as Maximize Conversion Value (Target ROAS), takes a similar approach, but while attempting to respect a goal ROAS that you can define. This is a key difference as it may limit your total return, but efficiency is often important to allow profitability.

Tips for Using Value-Based Bids

In my experience, value-based bidding works, and works well. But there are best practices to follow to get the most out of it, just like anything else. Here are a few things to keep in mind.

Provide Google With Enough Volume

Like all smart bidding, you need data. Google’s algorithm will have a hard time optimizing your bids if your campaign is getting three conversions a month. If volume is that low, consider a more simple bid strategy not aimed at conversion volume or value, like Maximize Clicks.

If this is the case, another option is to reconsider how granular your campaigns are organized. If they are overly granular, you may be better off grouping some campaigns together to allow Google to collect more data and optimize more efficiently.

Google recommends having at least 30 conversions in a month to use these strategies. They up that to 50 if you are using Target ROAS.

Give It Time

When evaluating performance, don’t make decisions on performance and optimization too quickly. Again, Google needs data, and so do you. Beyond just those 30 and 50 conversion volume rules, we recommend viewing data over several months (keeping in mind season trends) when making decisions.

Use Value Rules

Use Value Rules to add more detail to your conversion value. Again, not all conversions have the same value. But take it one step further and define within a single conversion action (free trial signups, for example) that conversions from desktops are 30% more valuable on average than those same conversions from mobile. Value Rules allow you to layer in adjustments for that. In addition to device modifiers, you can also modify by audience segments and rules.

Whether you are adding more detail to a variety of conversion actions or just trying to provide some feedback to Google on your single tracked conversion action, Value Rules allow you to communicate even more clearly what you want the algorithm to do for you.

Value-Based Bidding Is an Effective Strategy

Google’s machine learning is getting smarter all the time. Smart bidding is leaps and bounds ahead of where it was in years past, and Smart Bidding 2.0 (value-based bidding) is just another strong step towards leveraging that to get more out of your advertising budget. If you haven’t experimented with them in the past, perhaps because you’re running into a mental block around how to assign a value to your conversions, revisit them and see if you can give Google more data points for the algorithm to take into account. Start driving more value, instead of just more volume.

The post How to Use Value-Based Bidding for Success With Google Ads appeared first on Portent.