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If you are like us, then you can appreciate how useful AdWords can be to determine the right message to distribute to your customers. Ad copy testing is an important component of optimizing your campaigns and should be done regularly. The question is, what is the best way to do it?

In this article, we’ll be going through our preferred method as well as an additional method recommended by Google. We will spend time speaking to the pros and cons for each but plan to put this test into action and write a follow-up article on results for next quarter.

Our Preferred Approach (Impression Split Testing):

The most important thing for us, when it comes to ad copy testing, is to ensure each ad tested has received an even share of impressions. This is done by setting your AdWords campaign to ‘rotate indefinitely.’ This gives each ad the same amount of opportunity to entice the user to visit your site and convert.

The issue with this method is that sometimes one ad can throw off the impression split if its relevancy is much higher than the rest. This happens when a group of queries matches up better with one ad variant, then it does with another. If you refer to the table below, you can find an example of an ad test with uneven impression distribution.

If you were to make your decision purely based on CTR and Conversion Rate, you might think that Test 3 is the best ad. However, if you look at the impression difference between Test 1 and Test 3, you’ll see that Test 1 received almost 5x more impressions! This happens typically when one ad has a much stronger Quality Score relationship with the keyword than the others.

Some would argue that the most relevant ad, independent of ad-level metrics, should be the winner here. We would likely relaunch this test once more to determine if the results were merely a fluke.

The Other Approach (Optimize for Conversions):

One other method worth considering is using AdWords’ optimize for conversions setting. With this option, you can leverage Google’s algorithm that will automatically serve the ad that’s been deemed most relevant in most of the auctions. The benefit to this is that this setting will optimize your ads for clicks in each individual auction using signals like keyword, search term, device, location and more.

The downside to moving forward with this method as your primary ad testing setting is that you are trusting that Google’s algorithm will provide you the best results. You won’t be able to distribute an even share of impressions. This isn’t all bad since the goal is to achieve the strong results for the ad group.

Next Steps:

Being the skeptics that we are, we’ve decided to take our Google rep’s recommendation and put this method to the test. Our rep shared this article, and in it, the writer discusses a suggested methodology for testing using optimize for conversions. The test they suggest is as follows:

“Test an ad group with one ad (A) against an experiment ad group with four ads (A, B, C, and D) with rotation set to optimized. You can use drafts and experiments to create these two versions. That way, you’re testing to see whether or not more ads result in more impressions and clicks at the ad group level.”

For our next article, we’ll be putting this method to the test. The idea will be to determine if the optimize for conversions method yields more favorable results than our standard method. If you were interested in learning more about you should rethink PPC ad copy testing, please contact us by email at sales@synapsesem.com  or by phone at 781-591-0752.

In PPC, RLSA campaigns can sometimes be overlooked. Companies often latch on to the idea of flashy image ads to advertise their offerings, but little attention goes to how powerful remarketing can be for a search campaign. It truly surprises me how many businesses fail to recognize RLSA as a valuable paid search strategy. The given benefit of RLSA is that you are targeting users who have historically been to your site. Right off the bat, you know they are interested, and more likely to convert. Simply enabling RLSA and mirroring a current campaign structure can help to improve conversion rate. What many PPC experts do not know is how several simple strategies can boost conversion rate even more. Below explains 4 proven methods of creating a fully optimized RLSA campaign.

1.Excluding Audiences Based off Session Duration

Although it seems simple, excluding an audience compiled of users who have spent, for example, 5 less than 60 seconds on your site can be extremely impactful when it comes to increasing conversion rate. The ultimate goal of effective paid search is to target quality traffic, so why not weed out the bad when it comes to your RLSA campaigns?

In order to determine the proper session duration, we recommend analyzing custom segments within Google Analytics to determine what drives the lowest conversion rate.

Before implementing any sort of new exclusion we recommend confirming results with a test. You can use the AdWords Drafts and Experiments feature to replicate an existing high-volume campaign as a draft. A specific audience, targeting returning users with < 60 seconds on the site, was excluded from the draft campaign. It is important to choose a high-volume campaign so that results can be generated and deemed statistically significant as soon as possible. Check out the results of the test after a couple of weeks running.

As suspected, the campaign with the exclusion was lower volume, but produced much more qualified traffic. Conversion rate improved by 20%.

2. Highly Focused Cart/Checkout Abandoner Campaigns

If your site produces a decent amount of traffic, a strategy targeting cart or checkout abandoners can be key to improving conversion rate. According to the Baymard Institute, roughly 70% of users abandon a site after reaching the checkout point. Applying an audience of users who have reached the final checkout page, but have not converted, to an RLSA campaign can yield positive results.  Since this audience is highly invested in your product, you can increase bids drastically to target this user. Consider the campaigns created below.

It is clear the volume is much lower than a regular search campaign, but the conversion rate and CPA improvements are extremely beneficial. Conversion Rate increased by 60%, while CPA is 38% lower than the search campaign. CPC increased because we are naturally much more aggressive with our bids in the Cart Abandoner campaign. Not only does excluding cart abandoners improve conversion rate compared to regular search campaigns, but it also can help to improve overall account performance.

3. Understanding the Differences between Bid and Bid and Target

Possibly one of the most crucial aspects in developing a profitable RLSA campaign is knowing when to use the campaign setting of “Bid Only” (now called Observation) or “Bid and Target” (now called Targeting). Consider the scenario:

• You have an existing search campaign and you want to apply an RLSA audience to the campaign. If you choose “Observation,” the campaign will function as a regular search campaign, and the bids will be adjusted, based on your audience bid modifier. So, if a returning user searches for a keyword, the bid will be increased based on the modifier. If a new user searches a keyword, the regular Max CPC will be applied. Choosing this option will not cause the campaign to only target returning users.
• You have a new campaign where you would like to solely target returning users. For this method, you would apply the RLSA audience to the campaign and make sure the setting is set “Targeting.” This method is useful when creating custom copy or testing out overly generic keywords. Also, this method will inherently be much lower volume than the “Observations” setting.

Both settings can be key in helping boost conversion rate. It is just critical to know the differences between the two.

4. Using RLSA Audiences with DSA Campaigns:

DSA (Dynamic Search Ads) use the content on your site to target individual users. For example, if your site advertised bracelets and somebody search “gold charm bracelets” the DSA campaign would display an ad, with a dynamically created headline, and send the user to the page that Google determines the most relevant. This time saving strategy is a great way to expand your reach. Since you are not bidding on a specific set of keywords, DSA is perfect for keyword expansion.

A great way to combat the low volume nature of RLSA campaigns is to combine it with DSA campaigns. DSA is often criticized for being too risky, and it tends to generate high traffic.

RLSA is a key paid search strategy that, when used properly, can heavily enhance overall campaign performance. Overlaying the strategies discussed above can help to create high focused campaigns designed to boost account conversion rate.

To learn how Synapse SEM can help improve your RLSA marketing strategy, you may complete our contact form or call us at 781-591-0752.

PPC can be a truly remarkable sales channel. Nowhere else are you able to target hand-raisers with such precision. With paid search, someone actually tells you I want “this” and as marketers, it’s our job to provide them with information to help meet their need. If your company’s primary marketing objective is to drive leads for your sales team, you might often run into the issue of “quality” when it comes to your PPC leads. While quantity is important, the qualified leads are the ones that end up generating real profit. In this blog, we will discuss the 3 fundamental keys to improving your PPC lead quality.

Account Structure:

Like with many things in the world, a strong foundation typically leads to success. The same can be said for your Paid Search account. Without it, you can assure yourself that you’ll be wasting a lot of time and money. Keep the following in mind before you start building an account from scratch:

• Campaign structure: The account structure should be carefully planned with your business goals in mind. Consider which geographies are most important to target, how much budget should go to certain product lines, and what type of reporting you’ll need. Proper planning will allow for precise budgeting and simpler optimizations which will lead to more profitable results.
• Keyword targeting: When it comes to keyword targeting, you want to ensure that you have strong coverage over a wide range of keywords relevant to your business. After you finish identifying your initial keyword list, select the ones that you believe will drive the most qualified traffic and deliver the top leads. These terms will likely be longer-tailed iterations with less traffic volume.

If enough historical data is present (sometimes your best guess must do), we highly recommend focusing on best-performing geographies and keywords. This high priority campaign will then receive a bulk of the budget, to ensure that your top performing keywords will receive maximum impression share.

Ad Messaging:

Once you have your keyword set finalized, it’s time to move onto the ad copy. Leveraging the appropriate messaging can be crucial in further qualifying traffic before you even incur the cost of a click. Often our clients will bid on expensive keywords that are applicable to both larger enterprises and smaller ones. This is inevitable because many organizations have similar product types but different target markets. This is where strategic messaging comes into play.

When we onboard a client, one of our biggest interests is their target market. Are we going after CMO’s, companies with XXXX+ employees, or companies that drive $XXm in annual revenue? We’ll take these insights and include them in our PPC ad messaging to further qualify our traffic. We know our keywords are applicable to multiple customer sizes, but we need only be concerned with the smaller percentage of qualified traffic. Look at a recent ad copy test below:

As you can see, while our No Qualifier ad drove more front-end leads, it was our Qualifier ad that drove 150% more qualified leads. The cost per qualified lead is also much lower, almost 77% lower than the No Qualifier ad. We sacrifice performance from metrics like CTR and conversion rate, but we make up for it in the volume of qualified leads we generated with our Qualifier ads.

Back-end Tracking:

Lastly, and arguably most importantly, you will need to ensure that your back-end tracking is linked back to your PPC campaigns properly. By using hidden fields within your forms, you can pass valuable PPC specific information from a landing page URL to your marketing automation or CRM system. This is very important for PPC advertisers because it will allow us to better understand which of our ad groups and/or ad messaging are driving the most qualified leads.

We recommend including parameters like campaign name, ad group name, offer type, and messaging for starters. This way, when you run a Qualifier vs. No Qualifier ad copy test, you’ll be able to tell which ads are generating the qualified leads. This level of tracking also can help you cut costs on areas of the account that never drive qualified leads and will allow you to reallocate to more profitable areas.

If you were interested in learning more about improving your PPC lead quality, please contact us by email at sales@synapsesem.com  or by phone at 781-591-0752.

Whether you are a paid search marketer or not, we have all experienced those image ads following us around on almost every site we visit. Remarketing is a feature that allows advertisers to reach individuals who have previously visited their site when they are searching on other sites. Fans of remarketing boast about the ability to easily establish branding and influence customers who are likely to be interested in your product (since they’ve visited your site previously). Critics complain that the “Big Brother” aspect can be creepy and irritating to users. That fact is, remarketing and audience creation are powerful tools for paid search.  When implemented correctly they can increase conversion volume and provide countless opportunities to cross-sell your target audience.  A successful remarketing campaign starts with an audience. Here are 4 remarketing audiences that every search engine marketer should be using.

1. Non-Converter Audiences

A crucial point of remarketing is to attract previous site visitors to return to your site and make a purchase. Many marketers follow through with this strategy by simply targeting all users to their domain. However, they leave out one significant element.  Advertisers are constantly wasting their impressions and sometimes even clicks on individuals who have already converted on their site. A great way to narrow down your remarketing efforts and strengthen your target audience is to exclude anyone who has visited a confirmation page or a specific checkout page. This will also help to improve click-through-rate because obviously, someone who has already downloaded or purchased a product is less likely to click on that same advertisement.

Another key strategy is to specifically target users who have reached a checkout page or a cart, and left the site without converting. These individuals are typically more interested in your product, and you can capitalize on this by increasing bids. All of these strategies can be put in place when creating an audience. Google Analytics gives you the option to exclude users who have completed a goal, and you can also exclude anyone who has visited a specific page (i.e. a confirmation page).

2. Content Nurturing Audiences

Many B2B companies attract low funnel leads through content downloads (i.e.  (white papers, infographics, eBooks, etc.). A great remarketing audience strategy is to create a separate audience list for users who have downloaded a specific piece of content.  Then, you can specifically target those users with deeper funnel CTAs (i.e. free trials and demo requests). This notion can be seen in the results of one of our B2B clients. We set up a nurturing campaign in order to cross market to our previous converting users.  Consider the conversion rate discrepancy between the regular Non-Branded Search campaign below and the special Content Nurturing campaign. Although volume is lower than the search campaigns, conversion rate is 164% higher.  This is an excellent practice for B2B companies who have specialty lead nurturing marketing programs.

3. Similar Audiences

For smaller companies attempting to use Remarketing to acquire new customers it can often be a challenge to create an audience that is large enough to become eligible for the Display Network. For example, a remarketing audience list must contain 100 active visitors or users within 30 days. If you are utilizing very specific and niche targeting, this can sometimes be a challenge. Google remedies this with the introduction of Similar Audiences. These audiences are created by Google and take into account the actions users take within your original audience.  Google assigns any user that has similar search history as your site converters into a Similar Audience. For example, if your audience is targeting users who have reached a page about bedroom comforters, instead of targeting users looking for the broad category of “bedroom furniture,” it will remarket to people looking specifically for comforters on Google.. For more information on RLSA campaigns and Similar Audiences read our latest blog post.

4. Login/Career Page Users

One uncommon aspect of Remarketing audiences is the ability to use them for search campaigns. This is often practiced in RLSA campaigns, but there is one strategy that can be used for almost all search campaigns. Most sites have a Login Page or a Careers Page. Most likely, organizations are not interested in targeting individuals who have visited those pages. A great strategy to implement is to create a search audience targeting visitors to those two pages if applicable. You can then exclude that audience within your search campaign. Doing so will help limit impressions to only relevant customers. This is a technique that can be beneficial for both brand and non-branded campaigns.

If you’d like to learn more about how Synapse SEM can help you improve your paid search or organic strategy, please email us at sales@synapsesem.com or call us at 781-591-0752.

Sluggish site load times are a core finding on over 50% of the Technical SEO audits we perform for our clients.  When we present our clients the data and show them Google’s Page Speed Insights, we’re often asked, “Is it worth investing to improve these load times?”.

Even in a world with limited budgets and back-logged internal resources, our answer is increasingly becoming, “Yes.”

Improving site load times is an easy task to push off.  Optimized load times are not prerequisites to running search engine marketing programs.  If you want to spend money on search with a slow site, Google or Bing will happily take your money.  On the SEO front, content development initiatives often take priority over the technical work required to fix poor load times. But as the competition has literally ‘quickened,’ the ramifications of a slow site have become more and more pronounced.

Poor site load times have many detrimental effects on website performance, but several stand out as the most problematic:

1. The User Engagement and Revenue Impact – Slow load times are a major driver behind user bounces and exits. “58% of shoppers will leave a website if it takes more than 3 seconds to load.”  For Amazon, for example, “a 100 millisecond improvement in load time [is equivalent to] a 1% revenue increase.” These stats demonstrate a clear connection between page speed and conversions and ultimately ROI.
2. The SEO Impact – Load times are becoming an increasingly important algorithmic signal for Google. Google has been open that page load times are a major signal in their ranking algorithm for computers, but they’ve recently announced that the same signal will soon affect mobile rankings as well.  Furthermore, research has shown that “slow page speed means that search engines can crawl fewer pages using their allocated crawl budget, and this could negatively affect your indexation.”
3. The SEM Impact—As stated above, Google and Bing will let you run search ads despite your site’s load time issues. That doesn’t mean, however, that there are not repercussions to poor load times in an SEM account.  Landing page experience is a factor in determining keyword Quality Score.  A component of Google’s landing page experience assessment is site load times.  Google explains, “If it takes too long for your website to load when someone clicks on your ad, they’re more likely to give up and leave your website. This unwelcome behavior can signal to Google that your landing page experience is poor, which could negatively impact your Ad Rank. That’s why you want to make sure your landing page load time is up to speed.”

From conversion rate, to SEO rankings, to SEM ROI, site load times are having a major impact on the performance of your digital marketing programs.  Have you pushed off improving site speed?  If so, it’s time to get into action and make site speed a priority and a core KPI in your digital strategy.

To learn more about improving your site’s load times and implementing a technically sound SEO strategy, please contact us today!

Business owners, CMOs, marketing VPs – step up to the plate.  If your website is falling below page one in Google, or struggling to rank at all, you may feel like your digital marketing efforts are at a loss.  You may be losing quality traffic and qualified leads or sales to your competitors.  You may be lacking the online visibility you need to stay afloat.

When rankings fall short, online visibility suffers—and vice versa.  According to a recent Hubspot survey, the top-three positioned results on a search query receive over 60 percent of all search clicks.  And on average, 75 percent of users do not scroll past the first page of organic search results.

Google uses an ever-changing algorithm to rank the most relevant, credible websites first on their SERP.  Today, there are well-over 200 “ranking signals” used to determine whether you will rank above your competitors in the search results.  And these signals are constantly evolving.  The question is, how can you keep up?  Amongst a content-saturated web, how can your website stand out?

Right now, you may feel like you are doing all that you can to get your website to the top of the SERP – stuffing your content with highly-searched keywords, assigning link-building exercises to your marketing team, churning out blogs on a weekly basis.  Yet still, the return on your investments is minimal.

If you feel like you’re losing the game of SEO, it may be time to step back and review the bigger picture.  Consider what you are focusing on, but also what you may be missing.  Evaluate your SEO strategy and ask yourself how it ties into your other marketing campaigns.  Does it at all?

To help guide your digital marketing efforts, Synapse SEM has compiled six of the most common SEO mistakes we’ve seen bring down content marketing strategies:

SEO Mistake #1:  There is no relationship between your content marketing and SEO strategies.

Perhaps one of the greatest strategic mistakes you can make when it comes to search engine optimization is keeping SEO a standalone strategy.  SEO is just one key component to search engine visibility – and it cannot be successfully executed without quality content and the foundation of a solid content marketing strategy in place.

While very different entities, SEO and content marketing in fact go hand-in-hand.  It is search engine optimization that will help your content reach target audiences, your content that will influence your readers, and your content marketing plan that will ensure those users either convert or come back.  You cannot successfully have one without the other.

Recent studies have shown that content marketing leaders experience nearly 8 times more unique website traffic than non-leaders today.  To be a content marketing leader, you must do more than produce content.  You must produce consistent, quality content that engages your target markets.  You must marry this strategy with your SEO efforts in order to properly distribute your content to the right buyers, just as they are looking for it.

SEO Mistake #2:  You are not using data to plan your content.

As a business leader, you want each piece of content on your website to both appeal to as well as engage potential buyers.  That said, you must plan your content accordingly.  Before scheduling your next whitepaper or blog posts with your content dev team, try looping your SEO and SEM team into the conversation.  Together, work on planning content around the keyword phrases that will most benefit your target markets.  Which phrases have converted in the past?  Which keywords generate the most volume and the most interest?

SEO Mistake #3:  You are missing the competitive mark.

When is the last time you checked in on how your competitors are ranking?  Next time you find yourself in Google, take some time to do so.  In an incognito window, manually search some of your highest priority and competitive keyword phrases.  Are any competitors ranking above your website?  If so, what are they doing that you are not?

There are several SEO tools that can be leveraged to get competitive in the organic SERP.  Ahrefs, for example, is a backlink checker and competitor research tool that will actually show you how many more inbound links you need to rank above your competitors for a particular keyword.

Competitors’ SEO rankings can be used as a creative content and SEO advantage.  On one hand, you can see how they are structuring their meta tags and webpage content, as well as what types of content they are creating: whitepapers, infographics, blog posts and more.  Even more, you can use competitor websites to discover new keyword themes that may be lacking in your current content efforts.  Talk to your SEO team about which tools can be used to “spy” on your competitors’ organic keyword sets.

SEO Mistake #4:  You are overlooking gaps in your content.

Content gaps are ancillary keyword themes that are currently lacking on a given website.  They can be identified by evaluating competitor websites, looking at your current organic rankings, and determining where you have the most ranking opportunity.  Are you ranking on page 2 in Google for a high priority keyword theme?  This may be because you do not have enough supplemental content to support it.  Identifying this gap and building out keyword-centric content accordingly, can help you push organic rankings.  All the while, it can serve as a great effort to produce fresh and relevant content for your audience.

Doing a comprehensive content gap analysis will allow you to identify major ranking opportunities and returns for your website.  If you are ranking at the top of page 2 in Google for the keyword ‘marketing software’, for example, you may consider creating a clear-cut content plan around that keyword theme.  Any supplemental ‘marketing software’ themed content you publish, then, will help you gain more relevance on that keyword and boost your SEO rankings to page 1.

SEO Mistake #5:  You are relying too heavily on high-volume keywords.

Another all too common SEO mistake is an overreliance on high volume keyword rankings.  While extremely important for organic (and therefore, free) traffic, search volume is only one of many KPIs to think about when reviewing your SEO and content marketing strategies.

If you are optimizing your webpages for only high-volume, competitive keywords, and getting frustrated with the lack of results, this especially pertains to you.  We know—it can be easy to get caught up on high-traffic keywords when optimizing your website content, but keep in mind that a lot of traffic does not always mean quality traffic.

High volume does not always mean more traffic, either.  Let’s say you are trying to rank for a generic keyword phrase that has an average of 100,000 monthly searches.  Remember that thousands of other websites may be trying to rank for this keyword phrase, too.  If you do not have a high domain authority, you may get lost amidst bigger names and more distinguished brands.  And if other authoritative web pages (say, Wikipedia or Capterra) are taking up page one for a given query in Google, your chances of ranking are little to none.

So rather than going after the generic term, target keyword phrases where competition is comparable.  Try to tailor your optimizations to very specific and relevant keyword themes, even if it means sacrificing some search volume.  Often, it is these keywords that bring more quality traffic and will drive your online lead generation.  In fact, you may actually see an increase in qualified traffic by implementing this strategy.

SEO Mistake #6:  You do not have a sound internal linking strategy in place.

You can churn out content for your website every single day, but without interlinking all that content together, your efforts may fall short.  Internal linking is a crucial part of an SEO strategy as well as a content marketing plan for several reasons:

For one, internal links help users navigate your website.  Through the use of internal links, you can direct users to priority pages on your site – such as an asset or a demo page – and lead them to conversion.  If you create a great Buyer’s Guide eBook, for example, you can use blog posts and other related content to direct users to the download page.  This internal linking approach not only users, but also contributes to your business and larger lead generation strategy – by directing relevant, qualified contacts directly to contact and download forms.

Internal links also help search engines better crawl your domain.  Failing to internal link to pages within your site architecture can make it nearly impossible for search engines to index your pages accordingly.  To put it simply, if you do not have a single link pointing to your page, search engine crawlers will not be able to reach it nor rank it.

One of the greatest benefits of internal links is that they help disperse link equity across your domain.  Through internal links, you can build any given page’s authority and therefore its chances to rank in the organic SERP.  Keyword-rich anchor text on those internal links further supports this approach. By using target keywords in your hyperlinked text, you can tell crawlers what a page is about and increase your chances to rank for a given query.

When it comes to digital marketing, it is the little things that make all the difference— There are hundreds of ranking factors determining how your business will stand in Google; what feels like the slightest mistake could be all that it takes to weaken your rankings and push your competitors ahead.  That said, it is very important that you are aware of – and equipped to address — these common SEO mistakes.

To learn how Synapse SEM can help improve your content marketing strategy, you may complete our contact form or call us at 781-591-0752.

If you are a Google advertiser you have, without a doubt, been plagued with the client’s request of “How do we grow more traffic?” Growing traffic for any search engine marketer isn’t exactly a difficult task. You can increase bids, target new locations, or switch up your match types. You can launch Display or Remarketing campaigns, using image ads to capture new users.  Let’s face it, growing PPC traffic is easy, but, growing efficient PPC traffic is not. In the end, we all want more conversions, but for the same or lower price. All the above strategies need to be fine-tuned, tested, and matured before anything is deemed successful. We are all familiar with Display and Remarketing campaigns.  However, the more untouched strategy of RLSA campaigns may be the secret solution to growing traffic efficiently.  Recently in May, Google unveiled new additions to RLSA campaigns to further enhance performance.

What is an RLSA Campaign?

RLSA is essentially remarketing for search campaigns. This Google feature lets you customize search ads and bids to people who have already visited your site. You can choose which visitors (non-converters, etc.) automatically are added to your RLSA remarketing list.  Marketers then have the opportunity to develop campaigns, knowing that the targeted user has already visited, and is already interested in your product.  There are two basic ways to target users using RLSA.

1. You can replicate your existing keyword set and increase those bids knowing that the user is typically more qualified. According to Google, industry experts recommend being as aggressive as using a 100% bid multiplier on your keywords. The chart below shows an example scenario of a keyword in a regular search campaign versus the same exact keyword in an RLSA campaign. Even though Avg. CPC increased by roughly 100%, we saw a 253% increase in conversion rate, leading to a much stronger ROI. Users are more likely to convert, because they have already demonstrated interest in your product.

1. The second strategy marketers implement with RLSA campaigns is bidding on more generic keywords, knowing that the user is already interested in their product. For example, if you are running a paid search campaign for a luxury jewelry store, you may want to avoid bidding on the term “earrings”, because it is too broad or vague. However, if you know the user has already visited the earrings page of your site, you can bid on a term such as “earrings” and develop custom ad copy and send that user back to a specific PPC optimized earrings page. RLSA campaigns are also often used to promote discounts and promotion codes via the ad copy to interested users.

How to Grow Your RLSA Audiences:

The one limiting factor of RLSA campaigns, is that your search remarketing list can often times be small. If you are enabling the “target and bid” option for your ad groups, a user must hit your site, and then do another search while matching out to your assigned keywords within a set time period.

You may have noticed that every time you create a remarketing list, whether it be display or search, Google creates a “Similar” audience.  This look-a-like list consists of prospective users that contain the same interests as other users who have visited your site. In May, Google announced that these “Similar” audiences are now available for search campaigns.  Google assigns users to these lists by looking at the query behavior of each site visitor.  For example, say someone visited your site by searching “hotels in London” and converted. Google would then scan queries of other relevant users to assess their overall quality. If someone searches for “best things to do in London” or “where to stay in London,” Google would consider them to be a relevant candidate for a Similar Audience.  Users only remain on a Similar Audience list for 24 hours to ensure the highest amount of relevancy to your product.

The chart below depicts front end metrics comparing RLSA, Non-Branded Search, and Similar Audience campaigns.  As you can see, the Similar Audience campaign generates about 100% more volume than the traditional RLSA campaigns.  Although the differences in ROI are drastic between the two campaigns, the Similar Audience campaign is actually directly in line with our regular Non-Branded search campaigns in terms of ROI.

RLSA campaigns can be a great and effective way to boost overall site traffic in an efficient manner.  When implementing, paid search strategists should consider utilizing Similar Audiences to further grow traffic and capture a wider and more relevant audience.

If you’d like to learn more about how Synapse SEM can help you improve your paid search strategy, please complete our contact form or call us at 781-591-0752.

One of the greatest things about PPC is that if there is a query with enough search volume, you can likely bid on it. Not only that, but you can have your brand showing front and center on a search engine results page for that query as well. That is just one of the benefits of bidding on your competitor’s branded or trademark terms because it allows you to get right in front of prospective customers and persuade them to consider your product or service instead. When done right, competitor keyword bidding can be a profitable venture for a PPC strategy. In this blog, we’ll discuss the pros and cons of competitor keyword bidding as well as the tactical and strategic best practices to maximize results.

Pros and Cons

Before you consider identifying your top competitors and increasing bids on their terms, it’s important to weigh the positives and negatives of this strategy.

Pros:

Incremental leads/sales – When scaling a PPC account, it’s important to consider all options when looking for keyword expansion opportunities. Look no further than your competitors’ branded terms! Unless specified through a contract, it is not against the rules to bid on these types of terms. By doing so, you open up the opportunity to appear for relevant traffic and attract potential prospects away from your competitors. While conversion rates may be lower, this is still a great way to drive more leads/sales through your site.

Branding potential – As mentioned in the preceding section, your ads will be distributed to many prospects who are already relevant to your business because they are looking for an organization very similar to yours. This provides a great branding opportunity while your potential customers are in a critical consideration phase in the purchase funnel. Make certain to leverage engaging ad copy but be careful when using specific trademark terms in the messaging or risk ad disapprovals.

Cons:

High cost-per-click – Depending on your account average CPC is, you may run the risk of seeing higher click costs when running a competitor campaign. This is due in large part to the fact that you will likely have low Quality Score on competitor terms, which will inherently drive CPCs up. If you currently run PPC campaigns for your site, you know that your branded CPC is always of the cheapest. This is because your ads are most relevant to your site which is why your Quality Score on those terms will be strongest. It’s this exact reasoning as to why your competitor keywords will see a low Quality Score and that’s due to the relevance of your site to those terms.

Negative relationships – Would you like it if your competitors started bidding on your branded terms? Didn’t think so. Another potential con is negative relationships that you might begin with your competitors when bidding on their terms. They may reach out with a cease and desist letter or they might start bidding on your branded terms to try and drive up your CPCs. While certainly a negative, the gains from bidding on your competitors’ terms might outweigh the issues here.

Strategic Best Practices

Now that we’ve discussed the pros and cons to competitor keyword bidding, it’s time we talk about how to execute a successful competitor campaign.

Campaign structure: Separate your competitor keyword targeting into its own campaign. This will allow for easier optimizations. Other benefits are as follows:

• Budget management – Ensure you are not devoting too much of your overall efforts to this one strategy. Setting a daily cap on how much you are willing to spend will help you stay on top of these campaigns.
• Geo-specific targeting – If you are looking to minimize costs when it comes to competitive bidding, consider only targeting in certain higher priority regions. You’ll be able to still have visibility in top markets but you’ll not waste spend in less important areas.
• Ad scheduling – Similar to geo-specific targeting, ad scheduling is another campaign specific optimization that can be used to manage costs. Use ad scheduling to only have your competitor campaign distribute ads at certain times of day or days of week that are most advantageous for your business.

Ad copy: An important consideration with competitor campaigns, is having the most engaging ad copy in rotation. Ideally, you should test a number of different ad variations. We’ve recommended some messaging considerations below:

• Trademark variations: Instead of using a competitor’s trademark term, consider using a close variation that will still produce high Quality Scores but protects you from potential trademark infringement claims.
• Inclusion of pricing – One of the best approaches when bidding on competitor keywords, is to include pricing in your ad copy especially if your prices are better than your competitor’s.
• Competitive benefits – Does your platform deploy in under an hour and your competitor’s platform takes 24 hours? Do you offer free shipping and the competition charges $5.95? If your product or service has superior benefits, don’t be afraid to hammer that messaging home!

Landing pages: The last piece of the puzzle is converting traffic at a high rate, and that is mostly done with an effective landing page experience. It’s important to include iterations of your competitor’s trademark term if you can to ensure you are maximizing Quality Score too. Please find two approaches to developing an effective landing page below:

• Conservative approach – If you’ve decided that bidding on your competitor’s terms is enough and you don’t want to bug them anymore, we recommend providing prospects a conservative landing page experience. This would be similar to your current strategy where the above-fold CTA is prominent but you have additional below-fold CTAs to engage users even further. Also, be sure to showcase messaging that makes you appear superior to your competitors.
• Aggressive approach – If you are thinking about a more aggressive approach, consider a comparison chart that directly presents why your product or service is better than your competitor’s. This would include pricing and any other superior benefits side by side with the competitor’s name included in the chart. Insights from prior tests show this as a very effective strategy.

If you are interested in learning more about how you can more effectively leverage a competitor bidding strategy, please contact us by email at sales@synapsesem.com or by phone at 781-591-0752.

Since its inception, Google has tried to satisfy searchers’ intent and deliver the most streamlined user experience. And with each update, each algorithm, each new feature, the search engine superstar gets closer to the mark.

Featured Snippets, first introduced back in 2014, are one of Google’s greatest strides in meeting searchers’ needs.  They replace syntax with semantics and offer the most relevant, convenient answers to each wanting user. So much, in fact, that many experts believe these little snippets of information are actually revolutionizing the entire search experience – including the way that we optimize for it.

Whether you are a business owner, digital marketing manager, SEO rookie, or all of the above, there is no doubt that Featured Snippets can offer significant organic opportunities for your website. And it can all start here.

This is your guide to Google’s Featured Snippets. This is your key to ranking above position 1 in Google’s first-page organic search results, to driving relevant traffic to your website, and to getting your brand noticed. Let’s begin with the basics.

What are Featured Snippets?

Featured Snippets are Google’s way of giving us fast answers to common questions, right in the search results. Often in the form of definitions, how-to instructions, and other answers/solutions, Featured Snippets are separate blocks of content that appear above the organic listings on the first search results page.

Featured Snippets present users with answers without having to navigate to a website. Extracted from a given web page, they contain a summary of an answer, a page title and URL, and a link to the corresponding source.

What are the Benefits of Featured Snippets? 

Featured Snippets take up substantial real estate in Google’s SERP. For the mobile user, Featured Snippets can occupy an entire above fold experience. With all the space they consume, Featured Snippets practically scream to a searcher, “I can give you what you need!” or “Click me, I ranked above the rest!” In many cases, a user will respond.

Featured Snippets can double your organic real estate in the SERP:

In order to achieve a Featured Snippet, a website must rank on the first page of Google’s organic search results – anywhere between positions #1 and #10. This high ranking, combined with clear, quality content, tells Google that the website is credible and relevant enough to be positioned at the very top of the search results.

Those who are fortunate enough to earn a Featured Snippet rank not only once, but twice in the SERP. They rank in the Featured Snippet spot in addition to their listing in the organic results. When you rank twice on the first page of Google, you also look more credible to users, improving your page’s chances of being clicked.

In many cases, Featured Snippets show high CTRs and traffic spikes:

Many marketers debate the merit of Featured Snippets, claiming that they give users no incentive to click on a page. If the answer is placed right in front of users, and they get what they are looking for, why would they take the time to click through?

While seemingly a valid argument, these disbelievers couldn’t be more off. Substantial research surrounding Featured Snippets has proved that the standout located at the top of the SERP actually brings in more organic traffic and sees a higher click-through rate than its standard competitors.

SEO spearhead MOZ cites two noteworthy examples of Featured Snippets raising the charts: When Glenn Gabe lost their Featured Snippet position, they also lost over 39,000 clicks to their website in a two-week period. When HubSpot earned the Featured Snippet position on high-volume keywords, they experienced an average 114 percent boost in click-through rate:

On average, sources say that websites in the Featured Snippet spot will see a 20-30 percent spike in organic traffic, though some companies have experienced as high as a 516 percent traffic jump.

Featured Snippets are also highly prevalent:

Though Featured Snippets are not new to Google’s search results, they are becoming more prevalent. In their two-year lifespan, Featured Snippets have quintupled in frequency, and more than doubled over the last 12 months. Currently, they appear in almost 10 percent of all SERP content.

This is one of the primary benefits of Featured Snippets, simply that they are there. They are being utilized day-in and day-out, and judging by their recent rise in occurrence, it seems they are not going away. Websites and thought leaders must respond. Rather than letting other sites earn that top-notch position in the search results, they should fight for it. They should optimize their content for Featured Snippets, and subsequently snag that spot.

How Do You Win a Featured Snippet?

While over two-years-old now, Featured Snippets remain a mystery to a lot of search engine optimizers. Because in truth, there is no single formula for winning this position. There is no exact science to how Google pulls in Featured Snippets. Even more, there is no guarantee you’ll ever see your content featured. But because Featured Snippets are free, and often a shortcut to the top organic ranking, optimizing your content for them really can’t hurt.

The best way to build and optimize content for Featured Snippets is to first analyze current opportunities and see where you have the greatest potential. This means,

1. Conducting keyword research: The best way to begin keyword research is to try to anticipate what your customers are searching for and what they want to know. Then, determine which of these are the highest volume queries, and which produce or have the potential to produce a Featured Snippet. How-to instructions, questions and answers, and definitions have the greatest propensity to get pulled in.
2. Evaluating rankings and the competition: Many people believe that to earn a Featured Snippet, all you need to do is answer a question or create relevant content around a given theme. But as discussed previously, you have to rank on page 1 to even get to the point where Google will consider you for a spot. And to rank on page 1, you must be able to hold your own against the competition.

Consider this example. Say you want to earn the Featured Snippet for the query, “What is SEO?”, which produces over 33K searches per month. You have a strong domain authority of 54, but the websites ranking on page 1 for this term have an average domain authority of 80. Can you compete? Perhaps, but in the meantime, you may consider going after a less competitive, still frequently searched term such as, “How to optimize my blog for SEO” where the DA ranges upwards of 40.

If your content is not currently ranking on page 1, it does have the potential to get there. Quality backlinks improve domain authority, which in turn helps rankings. If your content is already ranking on page 1 for a target query, or has the potential to do so, then you are ready to optimize for the Featured Snippet spot.

Featured snippets are extracted from web pages that have clear, straightforward answers relating to a user’s query. That being said, it’s important to ensure that search engine crawlers and users alike can easily find and interpret the content. Some best practices for Featured Snippet optimization include:

• Placing your target keyword in the page headers (H1, H2s, and H3s)
• Formatting your content in structured lists (bulleted or numbered lists)
• Sectioning content into a Q&A style format with clear questions and straightforward answers
• Keeping content sections clean and concise (between 54 and 58 words)

With Millennial markets surging, mobile usage growing, and the demand for fast, quality content increasing, Featured Snippets appear to be Google’s way of meeting users’ needs. Businesses, websites, marketers—it’s time we follow suit. Step up to the plate and serve users’ a full course of the content they are craving.

If you’d like to learn how Synapse SEM can help improve search engine optimization on your website, please complete our contact form or call us at 781-591-0752.