Google Discovery Ads Now Available to All Advertisers

Last May, Google made big waves at their annual Google Marketing Live event and announced tons of planned new features and tools to help advertisers find customers online. Among these announcements was a new ad type called Discovery ads, designed to help advertisers get their products discovered by potential audiences across Google’s popular properties.

These new discovery ads allow advertisers to show their products to targeted audiences for the first time ever on Google’s Discover feed as well as prominently at the top of YouTube and Gmail. These prominent ad placements reach audiences in the moments even before they search. According to Google, nearly 85% of people will take action within 24 hours of discovering a new product so these ads can significantly impact your customer’s journey to purchasing from you.

It might sound like a branding play at first, but Google’s automation can deliver high direct ROI as well. The campaign not only drives conversions, but it does so inexpensively—the average CPA on Discovery campaigns today is only $12.19!

Last week, Google announced these Discovery ads are now available to all advertisers globally! Here’s everything you need to know to make the most of this ad type.

What are Google Discovery ads?

Google’s newest Discovery ads are an easy way to get your products shown to your highest value customers. Discovery campaigns streamlines much of the ad testing, targeting, and campaign optimization with robust machine learning to target your ads across YouTube, Gmail, and the Discover feed all in one campaign type.

Advertisers still control their daily budget, target audiences and guide Google in crafting ad creative and campaign conversion goals to optimize towards across their networks.

Google Discovery ad formats

Google’s Discovery campaigns offer 2 unique ad formats, standard (single image) Discovery Ads and Discovery Carousel Ads. Much like Responsive Search ads and Responsive Display ads, advertisers provide Google with several different assets for Google to dynamically test different ad variants to show different customers more customized messaging.

Standard Discovery ads

A Discovery ad needs to have several unique assets:

Final URL: After clicking on your ad, this is where the ad directs. To ensure a higher ad quality and conversion rate, set your final URL to a page where someone can learn more about the specific product you are advertising, and they can potentially buy it. Avoid sending people to your homepage.
Images: Discovery ads are meant to inspire and stop your audience mid-scroll on these high traffic pages, so tap into your creative resources. Don’t play it safe – this isn’t the search engine results page and you’re not just competing against text on these pages. Stand out with bold colors and visual contrast, like you might in a Facebook ad. Google has plenty of creative suggestions to get your ideas flowing.
You can upload up to 15 different images for Google to test in a Discovery ad. Test out different images and sizes (Square 1:1 and Landscape 1.91:1) to get the most reach.

You can choose to upload your own images, search for stock images on Shutterstock, have Google scan images from your website, or even use images from your social media feeds on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or LinkedIn.

Headlines: Your headline will be featured as the first line of your ad in bold. You can provide up to five headlines, each with 40 characters.
Descriptions: Your descriptions will appear below your headlines and is your opportunity to provide more compelling messaging to your ad copy. You can provide up to five descriptions, each with 90 characters.
Business Name: Your business name will appear alongside your ad. Keep your business name consistent to how people would call or search for you.
Call to Action (optional): You can choose from several popular call to action buttons (such as “Shop Now” or “Get Quote”) to include alongside your ad. Alternatively, you can allow Google to test and optimize this call-to-action for you.
Discovery Carousel ads

The carousel ad format is very similar to the standard Discovery ad format but allows for users to scroll through all the images you provide in a carousel format. Advertisers can upload between two and 10 images to be used as cards in the carousel, and Google will display them in the order you upload them.

Keep in mind that Google only allows square images or landscapes with an aspect ratio of 1.91:1 to be used for cards and all the images within a Discovery Carousel ad must either be square OR landscape. You can’t mix square and landscape ads in the same Discovery Carousel ad or the entire ad may be disapproved.

Google Discovery ad targeting

Unlike search campaigns, Google Discovery ads aren’t targeted by keywords. Instead, advertisers can choose which audiences they want to reach with their ads. Advertiser can target their ads to specific audiences including:

Remarketing: Remarketing allows you to target your ads to past customers or website visitors. You can create different remarketing audiences based on their past interactions (visits to a key page, shopping cart abandoners, recently purchased from you) to reengage prospects who are already familiar with your brand.
Detailed Demographics: Demographic targeting on Google allows you to target your ads to users based on their age, gender, parental status, relationship, education, and homeownership status.
In-Market Audiences: In-market audiences reach users whom have recently begun to search, browse, and are actively considering making a purchase. Google has hundreds of different in market audiences for people ready to buy everything from a new car, computer, or payroll system.
Life Events: Life events lets you target people who just are about to have a major milestone, such as starting a business, changing jobs, graduating, getting married, or buying a home.
Affinity & Custom Intent: Affinity audiences and custom intent audiences reach users based on the topics and interests that people have searched for and browsed in the past.
Alternatively, if you do not choose any specific audiences, Google will target your ads to a wide audience and do leverage its own signals to optimize who sees your ads.

If you want to target more than one audience, you can create several ad groups or discovery campaigns to do so.

Google Discovery ad bidding and budgets

Google’s Discovery campaigns are built machine learning and rely upon Google’s Smart Bidding strategies. Currently, Discovery campaigns only support two bidding strategies:

Target CPA: Google will attempt to drive conversions at a specific cost per conversion. It’s recommended you use this strategy if you’ve got budget that’s at least 10 times your target CPA.
Maximize Conversions: Google will attempt to drive as many conversions at the lowest CPA possible. This is best for advertisers who may have smaller budgets or wouldn’t expect to see 10 conversions a day.
The average CPA on Google Discovery campaigns is only about $12, so most advertisers can get a lot out of small budgets. Still, industries that normally see higher CPAs on search and display should expect CPAs more in line with their account norm.

When first launching or making changes to a campaign, Google advises to wait two or three weeks between testing new bids or changing ads so that it can learn how users react and adjust to shifts to performance in real time.

How do I create Discovery campaigns in Google Ads?

Creating a Google Discovery Campaign is straight forward if you are familiar with the Google Ads interface.

1. Create a new campaign by hitting the “+” blue icon on the campaigns page.

2. When selecting your campaign’s goal, choose “Sales,” “Leads,” or “Website Traffic.” Alternatively, you can create a campaign without a goal’s guidance.

3. Select the “Discovery” campaign type.

4. Name your new campaign. Select which languages and where you would like your ads to run.

5. Set your daily budget and which bidding strategy you’d like Google to rely on to optimize your Discovery campaign (Currently only Maximize Conversions or Target CPA options are allowed).

6. Review “additional settings” if you want:

Your campaign to have a set start and end date
Your campaign to only run certain hours of the day or days of the week
You only want your campaigns to optimize for certain conversion actions in your account.
7. Create your first ad group and audience targets. Mind that you can create more than one ad group later if you want to target more audiences.

8. Upload your Discovery ads.

You will then be prompted to review your new Discovery campaign before launching it. Smash that continue button and your campaign goes live!

Google’s Discovery campaigns harness sophisticated audience signals and machine learning to find you more customers in an easy to manage campaign type. Our clients got a lot out of Google’s Discovery campaigns while they were in beta, so we’re excited to see them globally available to all advertisers today.

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4 Tips for Better Display Advertising During COVID-19

Like most online advertising channels, I have seen my clients shift how they’re using the Google Display Network to help them implement their evolving marketing strategies during the pandemic. I know each account is different, and our approach to optimization should be customized for every single account. But I wanted to take the time to share some of the tactics I have used the most since COVID-19 started impacting my clients’ accounts.

From our post on online advertising trends during COVID-19.

The best part about this post is that many of these display tactics can be used and tested for almost any account, whether you have been affected by COVID-19 or not. Let’s hop in.

1. Test pay-per-conversion bid strategies

Pay-per-conversion is only available if you are using a target CPA strategy, but it is pretty much exactly what it sounds like. You only pay if someone converts on your website, and if you have not tried this option yet, I highly recommended testing it out. If your Google Ads account has at least one-hundred conversions in the past thirty days, you can change your target CPA strategy to focus on conversions.

I have had several clients that had to lower their ad spend right when COVID-19 hit. To avoid going completely dark, we shifted the display campaign bid strategies to pay-per-conversion to allow us to keep building awareness, but not spend a lot.

In the image above, this client has a target CPA of $100. Since we launched this small campaign in March, we have received over four million impressions, over eighteen thousand clicks, but just one conversion. So we only paid $100 for all that brand awareness and traffic with a quality conversion as icing on the cake. But it gets even better.

Pay-per-conversion bidding only applies to direct conversions. If your display campaigns using this bid strategy rack up view-through or cross-device conversions, but you do not see any direct conversions, you will not have to pay a cent. This can help you stretch your ad budgets further and help your other sources increase their conversion, so it would be good to test even if your account has not been negatively impacted by the pandemic.

2. Monitor your placement reports more frequently

This section is going to be the shortest of this blog post, but it is still important: User behavior during the coronavirus pandemic has changed. With that being said, we have to review if the audiences we are targeting with our display campaigns have changed. Hopefully, you are already checking your placement reports in Google Ads frequently. But if you feel your target audience is seeing a shift in performance, you should be checking where your ads are being shown much more frequently than you were before COVID-19 hit.

Some people may have more time on their hands right now—we know that, overall, people are spending more time online. This additional amount of traffic could either benefit your campaign performance, or possibly hurt you. I have seen both ends of the spectrum in my client accounts. Monitor your placements to see what optimizations you should make and, remember, not all changes needed to be made will be negative. Yes, you will most likely see more placements to add to your exclusion lists. But you might take your new findings to either block out more, or target more, placements based on the recent data. You simply won’t know the actual trends if you are not checking your placement reports much more frequently than you were before the pandemic hit.

3. Get proactive with your exclusion strategy

This next recommendation comes with some additional help from my friend Kirk Williams and the Zato Marketing team. They recently wrote a blog post that included a coronavirus placement exclusion list. Please go and check it out for a full explanation. The thought here is there are many news sites that are part of the Google Display Network. And some of these news sites have large ad spaces. Check this one out from The New York Times.

Demographic targeting updates would fix this, but still.

Our data suggests that CTRs for clothing and apparel are back to pre-COVID-19 levels, but even if I was in the market for this product, I’m not going to be in the mood for it while I’m trying to read about economic recovery. While the exposure on these sites could still be valuable, you may have an account where you do not want to waste ad spend on potential users who just want to read about the latest pandemic updates. As always, you will have to decide depending on your account goals.

If you do decide to use the Zato exclusion list, you will be able to block out a variety of URLs, such as news organization URLs or common URLs with pandemic-related terms.

On the flip side, this exclusion list can also work great as a managed placement list for targeting users. If you have a product or service that can be really helpful during COVID-19, use this list to try and target users while they are actively reading or thinking about the pandemic. The intent to buy might be higher with this strategy. And while we are on the topic of implementing more managed placements…

4. Work on your managed placement campaigns

If you have seen audience behavior change in any of your campaigns (this could be for both display and YouTube campaigns), then you may be more hesitant testing out different audiences. While I have found custom intent, auto-created, and in-market audiences to be pretty valuable for my awareness campaigns, I have seen performance for some of these audiences dramatically change since COVID-19 really hit. That being said, you may want to spend more time researching new managed placement options beyond the ones that have converted in your current campaigns.

I currently have a client that wants to target moms. It is easy enough to start creating a display campaign and start searching for “mom” websites. It does not take much effort to type in one keyword and scan through the initial list of results.

Searching for just the exact audience is easy, but our researching efforts should not end there. When COVID-19 hit, schools closed. Many parents were automatically forced to add “homeschool teacher” to their resume. (It’s important to note that the responsibility of being a homeschool teacher is not solely on a mother’s shoulders, and not all families with a parent or parents homeschooling children include mothers. But mothers are parents, too, so that factors into our targeting. We can also control our efforts as much as possible with gender-based targeting.) With this in mind, we used the current scenario to come up with new research ideas for managed placements.

We now see there are several websites that are part of the Google Display Network that are all about homeschooling. I can start pulling these URLs over to my targeting selections, and oh, we are not done yet. Even when the kids do not have any homework to do, we still have to keep them entertained right? (I am still looking for ideas so, fellow parents, please help me).

So in the case of my client, I can easily try and look for projects I can have the kids do, too. Parents are probably looking for art projects, science activities, and sports to keep their kids occupied. Even if stay-at-home restrictions are getting lifted, it does not mean life is going to go back to normal anytime soon. So I want to make sure my client has ads on websites for parents in this situation.

This is just one example for one particular client. Think about all the ways user behavior has changed because of COVID-19. More importantly, think about how behavior for your specific audience has changed. Would they visit different sites now? What features, services, or needs are more important to them right now? Does this shift in behavior justify finding different placements to use as a new strategy? These are the questions you will want to ask yourself. Once you truly take the time to research what is important to your target audience during the pandemic, the more options you have for managed placements to stay top of mind wherever your target audience likes to be online.

Check on your display strategies as things keep changing

Even though it seems like life is slowly getting back to normal, we have a long way to go until COVID-19 is not on our minds. I understand each account is different. Depending on the industry, some accounts are hurting right now while others are experiencing an increase in volume during the pandemic. No matter which bucket you fall in, hopefully this post gave you a list of ideas to consider. This industry has always been an ever-changing one. But when you add a pandemic to the mix, there seems to be a lot more to be done in each account. If there are strategies you have implemented during the pandemic that has helped your account, please share it with the rest of the PPC community in the comments below.

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Understanding & Fulfilling Search Intent

Posted by BritneyMullerGoogle houses the world’s information, and it’s their goal to serve the best answers to searchers’ questions. That means that understanding what your target audience is searching and why is more important than ever — but how do you effectively analyze and fulfill true search intent?
In this brand-new Whiteboard Friday, Britney Muller shares everything you need to begin understanding and fulfilling search intent, plus a free Google Sheets checklist download to help you analyze the SERPs you care about most.

Click on the whiteboard image above to open a high-resolution version in a new tab!

Video Transcription
Hey, Moz fans. Welcome to another edition of Whiteboard Friday. Today we’re going to be uncovering understanding and fulfilling search intent, and this is a really important topic to understand and better prepare your content around.
I want you to think about this idea that Google houses the world’s information. They very likely know what the majority of people searching X are seeking, and they’re going to continue to get better and better and better at that.
Understanding search intent
What I would suggest you do and what you arm yourself with is this idea of really leaning on Google to better understand the intent behind any given search. You’re probably very familiar with the informational, navigational, investigational, and transactional-related intent types, and you can pull this information, like I said, directly off the SERP.
Analyze: informational, navigational, investigational, transactional?
You’re probably very familiar with the informational, navigational, investigational, and transactional-related intent types, and you can pull this information, like I said, directly off the SERP.
Is there a featured snippet? Is there a knowledge graph? You can pull that sort of information. Are there site links? Is it navigational in nature, people just trying to go to one destination? Is there a comparison table? Are they perhaps investigating?Transactional, are there tons of ads? Are there lots of product pages showing up in the results? Is there a shopping carousel? You can pull intent types directly from the search. What’s interesting though is any given SERP doesn’t necessarily have one intent type.
In fact, it likely has a couple of nitty-gritty intent types that Google themselves haven’t quite totally figured out. I want to pull back the curtain on how Google is actively trying to get better at understanding intent within questions and answers within content.
They put up a competition to a bunch of data scientists to determine if anyone could build a model that can accurately weight these various intents with the content. 
Question information
There’s question information that they wanted the model to predict around: Is this fact-seeking? Does it have multi-intent? Is it not really a question? That’s my favorite. Is it well-written? 
Asker intent understandingBody criticalConversationalExpect short answerFact-seekingHas commonly accepted answerInterestingness to othersInterestingness to selfMulti-intentNot really a questionOpinion-seekingWell-writtenQuestion type
Then they’re also trying to understand the type of question. Is it a definition? Is it instructions? Is it spelling, which is most of my searches? 
ConsequenceDefinitionEntityInstructionsProcedureReason explanationSpellingAnswer information
Then they get into answer information. Is the answer intent helpful? Is it plausible? Is it relevant? Does it satisfy the question? 
HelpfulLevel of informationPlausibleRelevanceSatisfactionAnswer types
They even drill a bit deeper into answer types. Is it instructions, procedure, well-written? 
InstructionsProcedureReason explanationWell-writtenAgain, you see these sort of themes occur. So it’s important it’s not just these four. It’s great to know these and sort of run with them a bit. But put these in your back pocket and know that it goes a lot deeper and it’s a lot more complicated than that.
Search Intent Checklist
Let’s dig into this checklist of sorts. The idea behind this is that there’s a Google sheet that you can have today, make a copy and tweak however you’d like, that walks you through really this first process of understanding the intent and then fulfilling it.
Make a copy of the Search Intent Checklist
Once you do this a couple of times, you’re not going to need this checklist. This will become second nature to you. Let’s just walk through what this looks like. 
1. Uncover the SERP intent
First, what is the primary SERP intent? For my example, I have phonetic alphabet, informational. Secondary intent might be investigational for the types of content people are looking for.
2. List any SERP features and other SERP notes
I list the SERP features that I notice in the search results. I’m really just making mental notes of what I’m seeing. So for this particular SERP, there were a lot more visuals than I expected, and so I made note of that. That kind of surprised me. I also made note this is the order of the features that are showing up.
3. Read, consume, and take notes about the ranking URLs
The next thing you do is to read and consume all of the ranking URLs. This is so, so important if you’re serious about ranking for a particular keyword. You should actively be consuming this content and making notes about topics and entities covered. 
What sort of multimedia are they using?What are the layouts? What does it feel like? You can really start to have a better checklist of what does that content look like and what are those expectations. 
4. Scan ranking URLs’ Domain Authority with MozBar
Then, ooh, my favorite secret hack is to activate MozBar for the search result page. You can see the Domain Authority and the backlinks for every single URL on a SERP.
A lot of people don’t know you can use MozBar directly within Google search results, and it’s fantastic. What I use this for, if I want to rank for something like this, I would just evaluate all of the organic DAs, and I would really evaluate that range and see if the website or my client’s website might be competitive with it.
If they’re not even close, maybe I pivot this and I try to target something more appropriate for them to rank for in the short term. 
Fulfilling search intent
Now the fulfill part, are you fulfilling this intent? 
Page goal
What is the page goal? Every page should have a goal.
Outline scannable framework
I want to just briefly explain what I mean by this. Scannable content is so, so important. More and more people are on mobile. Our attention span is getting shorter and shorter. 
1. Generate 10–20 title ideas and use the extras for social
This idea that you should generate multiple title ideas to come up with the best one, but then use the others for social media. Shout-out to Andy Crestodina, who came up with that, which I love. 
2. Use the inverted pyramid
Use the journalistic style where you tell people the most important information at the top. 
3. Succinct summaries
Make sure you have succinct summaries. Omit needless words, whether that be at the top or at the bottom of your content. It’s so important to have. Google loves pulling that information for things like featured snippets. 
4. Scannable subtitles
Make sure you have scannable subtitles. Copyblogger does this beautifully, where you can just scan one of their articles and you quickly understand what the content is about like that. That’s incredibly helpful for users. 
5. Leverage multimedia
There’s no reason why you couldn’t also take a piece of content you’re working on and provide other options or other forms for your visitors to consume it. We don’t know what any given visitor might be or the position they’re in to consume content at that time.
Maybe they’re going for a walk and they want to hear audio. It’s really great to provide different media types. 
6. Provide relevant next steps
Then lastly, I have this here and here, are you providing relevant next steps? So I really thought about this for someone searching phonetic alphabet that are looking for information.
What might be relevant next steps? It sounds like they’re sort of in a learning mode. So why not quiz them on it? Why not entice them to learn more about aviation jargon and language? You can start to like put yourself in the mindset of the user and really try to cultivate logical next steps for someone to go through on your site, so really building out that supportive content.
Make sure you have a CTA
Then lastly, make sure you have a CTA. Hopefully, it’s to fulfill the page goal that you set for yourself. But ideally this should become second nature after a couple of passes, where you just have these kind of mental checks in your head and you can quickly and better evaluate search result pages to target and rank and succeed in search. 
 I really look forward to hearing your thoughts and your comments down below. Thank you so much for joining me on this edition of Whiteboard Friday. I will see you all soon. Thanks.
Video transcription by Speechpad.com
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How to Create & Verify Your Google My Business Account

Your free Google business listing (known as your Business Profile) can do more than you think. When properly optimized, it showcases your best features and makes it easy for consumers to discover, learn about, and contact your business. But in order to properly optimize your Business Profile, you need access to it, and in order to access it, you need to verify with Google that you are the rightful owner.

While it seems as though it should be as simple as “step one create, step two claim, and step three verify,” the process is neither that simple nor that linear—which, if you’re reading this post, you have already figured out. That’s because it requires three different Google accounts and two different Google platforms, all of which have very similar names. Talk about a brain bender.

So, in this post, I’m going to first iron out for you exactly what’s what in Google, and then give you a clear-cut roadmap to creating a Google My Business account and using it to claim and verify your Business Profile on Google.

Why create a Google My Business account?

Your Google My Business account makes it easy for consumers to discover, learn about, and contact your business online.  These are the core benefits of a Google My Business account, and if that’s not enough to convince you, consider the disadvantages of not having one.

You risk losing customers. Without a Google My Business account, you don’t have control over the information displayed in your Business Profile, and according to a BrightLocal study, 68% of consumers would stop using a local business after finding incorrect information online.

You risk a poor reputation. Without a Google My Business account, you cannot respond to your Google reviews. And with reviews being both a Google ranking factor and the number one influence on consumer buying, being able to manage them is a must.

You lose out to competitors. An empty or bare-bones Business Profile is akin to having an unkept storefront. If you don’t take care of your business, how can consumers trust that you’ll take care of them? They’ll be much more likely to click on and engage with a Business Profile in the search results that has lots of attractive information and looks lively.

You lose SERP real estate. Google ranks Business Profiles according to their quality, and a Business Profile alone is not enough. A Google Business Profile managed through a Google Business account, however, can be optimized to rank above competitors for relevant keyword searches.

Which listing would you choose? The unclaimed one on the left or the one optimized by Google My Business account on the right?

What you need in order to claim and verify your business on Google

By now, it should be clear that creating a Google My Business account and verifying ownership of your business is crucial if you want to provide accurate information, respond to reviews, attract customers, and rank higher in local search.

As mentioned earlier, however, the process is not super simple. It involves two different Google platforms and three different Google accounts, all of which have similar names, and some of which you likely already have. So to get you off on clear footing, let’s first iron out the terminology.

Google Account: This is the free account you create with Google so you can have access to Google Docs, Google Drive, Google Photos, Gmail, and more. Many call it their “Gmail account,” but Gmail is just one of the features; you can actually use any email to set up a Google Account. In this post, I’ll use the term “standard Google Account“ to refer to this account type, just to avoid confusion. Most business owners already have two standard Google accounts—one they use for their personal life and one they use for their business.

Business Profile: This is your free business listing on Google that appears on Google Maps, the local results of Google Search, and the right-hand Knowledge Panel of Google Search.

An example of a Business Profile on Maps.

Google My Business account: This is the free account you create that gives you a dashboard to manage and enhance your Business Profile.

Your Google My Business dashboard.

How to verify your business on Google

Now that you have the proper terminology laid out, let’s put the pieces together to form a full picture of the process.

The goal is to gain full access to your Business Profile on Google.

The means by which you do this is your Google My Business account, which you sign up for using a standard Google Account.

The steps to complete the process are as follows:

Make sure you have a standard Google Account for your business.
Make sure you have a Business Profile.
Create a Google My Business account.
Request to claim your Business Profile.
Verify ownership of your business.
Now, with the groundwork laid out, you are armed and ready to successfully claim and verify your business on Google. The steps outlined below are written linearly, and in some cases, you’ll need to skip down a step. But I’d still encourage you to read them all carefully to avoid hitting roadblocks or creating duplicate accounts.

Step #1: Make sure you have a Google Account for your business

This is the standard Google Account we described in the terminology section above. If you already have one (make sure it’s not your personal-use Google Account), skip down to Step #2. If you don’t have a Google Account for your business, follow the steps below.

1. Go to accounts.google.com/signin.
2. Click “Create account.”

3. You’ll see a drop-down with two options. Choose “To manage my business.”

4, Supply the necessary information.

Step #2: Make sure you have a Business Profile

Your Business Profile is the official term for your Google business listing. As mentioned above, Google Business Profiles are separate from Google My Business accounts. A Business Profile can exist on its own, without Google My Business account. The problem with this is that the business owner has no control over the information in that Business Profile until they claim it, and this is done through Google My Business. Bottom line: You’ll want to make sure you have a Business Profile to claim once you’ve set up your Google My Business account.

If you know you’ve already created a Business Profile, skip down to Step #4. If you haven’t created one or are unsure, follow the steps below.

Note: Even if you didn’t create it, there’s a good chance your Business Profile already exists. This is because a Business Profile is simply a place on Google Maps, which any person or computer can add. So to check and see if you need to create a Business Profile, follow these steps:

1. Go to Google.com/maps.
2. Search your business name.
3. If your business name populates in the drop-down with an address next to it, this means your Business Profile already exists. Great! You can move on to Step #4.

If your business name does not populate with an address, select it and you’ll see something like this:

4. Select “Add a missing place,” and you’ll see a screen like this:

5. Provide the requested information. Notice that you’ll have the option to claim the business within that same window. Since you don’t have a Google My Business account yet, you’ll need to move on to Step #3. If you already have a Google My Business account, you can follow the prompts and you’ll end up at Step #5—look at you go!

Step #3: Sign up for a Google My Business account

The means by which you claim your Business Profile on Google is through a Google My Business account. Provided you have a standard Google account (see Step #1), here’s how to sign up for a Google My Business account.

1. Make sure you are logged into the standard Google Account for your business (and not the standard Google Account for your personal life).
2. Go to google.com/business.
3. Select “Manage now.”

4. Provide the basic information Google asks for, including.

Business name
Address
Website
Phone number
Delivery area (if applicable)
Category
Once you connect this account with your Business Profile (the final step of this post), additional fields will open up in your dashboard so you can provide even more information about your business. This information is the key to optimizing your business for local SEO and attracting more customers through your free listing.

Step #4: Request to claim your Business Profile

This is where we start putting the pieces together. Unfortunately, creating a Google My Business account (from Step #3) does not automatically connect it to your Business Profile (from Step #2). You need to tell Google to connect them, and you do this by verifying ownership of your business. To do this, start by locating your Business Profile on Google Maps or Google Search and requesting to claim it. You can do this one of two ways:

Claim request method #1:

1. Go to google.com and search for your business name and location. If your Business Profile appears on the right-hand side, find the “Own this business?” option and select it.

2. From there you’ll be taken to a screen that says “Manage this business so you can reply to reviews, update info, and more.”

3. Click “Manage now,” and follow the prompts to claim your business. Once again, make sure you’re logged in with the standard Google Account used for your business, and not for your personal life, referred to in Step #1.

Claim request method #2: Google Maps

1. Go to Google.com/maps.
2. Type in your business name.
3. Click on your Business Profile, which will expand.
4. You’ll then see an option to “Claim this business.”

Clicking on “Claim this business” will then overlay the same screen you saw in the first method, but this time right over the map.

4. Click “Manage now” and follow the prompts. Again, make sure you’re logged in with the Google Account you created for your business referred to in Step #1.

Step #6: Verify ownership of your business

This is the home stretch! If you need to grab a Gatorade or some orange slices, I’ll be right here when you get back.

When you click on “Manage now” as instructed in Step #5, you’ll be asked to provide information to prove you are the rightful owner of the business. Depending on the type of business you have, if you created the Business Profile and you’re logged into your Google My Business account, you might get validated on the spot. If you aren’t the one who created the Business Profile, Google will send you a verification code that you’ll enter into your Google Business dashboard. Depending on the circumstances of your account/security requirements of your industry, you may be given your verification code via regular mail, email, or text.

Once you receive the code and enter it into the box, you will have full ownership of your Business Profile on Google! You can now manage reviews, update information, add more attractive details, and optimize it for successful local marketing.

Take the time to verify your business on Google

Google is changing the way consumers find and engage with local businesses, so if you want to continue reaching your audience and attracting customers with your free Business Profile, be sure to follow the above steps. The process has different parts and pieces, but it doesn’t have to be quite so complicated with guides like this and options like doing it on mobile. Get started with creating, claiming, and verifying through Google My Business today so you can get the most out of this incredible and free tool available to you.

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How to use Headlines to Help Create and Optimize Content ?

Catchy headline is very important to draw attention of the reader about an article or an advertisement. It should include words and ideas to draw someone’s eye and reader’s interest to read the entire content.

4 Ways to Help You Think Up Engaging Headlines

  • Use a numeric value in your headline
  • Keep it short (8-12 words)
  • Add emotion such as curiosity or anticipation
  • Ask a burning question

Types Of Headlines

  • Flush Left Headline
  • Banner Headline
  • Inverted Pyramid Headline
  • Cross-Line Headline

Fractl’s Growth Specialist shares a guide on how to optimize content through effective headlines. It covers how you can frame, promote, pitch, and sell your content.

The post How to use headlines to help create and optimize content appeared first on Search Engine Watch.
Source: Read More

Content, SEO, content, Content marketing, content optimization, content tips, evergreen content, Google, keyword optimization, long-tail keywords, SERPs

What Is Google My Business & Why Do I Need It?

In an effort to gain more visibility on Google, many businesses create a Google business listing (known officially as a Business Profile).

If you’re one such business owner, something you might not realize is that creating a Business Profile does not give you management over it, and you need those management and editing capabilities if you want your Business Profile to work for you as an effective SEO and lead generation tool.

So how do you gain management over your Google Business Profile? The answer is that, in addition to creating a free Business Profile, you must also separately create a free Google My Business account for that profile.

You need a separate Google My Business account to manage your Business Profile.

A Google My Business account is the only means by which you can claim ownership of your Business Profile, attain management rights to it, and unlock additional free features to increase your visibility on Google. In this post, I’m going to cover everything you need to know about Google My Business, including:

What Google My Business is
How to use Google My Business effectively
How to use Google My Business for SEO
How to create a Google My Business account
Read on so you can incorporate this free and powerful tool to your marketing toolkit!

What is Google My Business?

As mentioned, Google My Business is a tool that enables you to manage and optimize your Business Profile on Google. So to explain what Google My Business is and how it works, let’s first make sure we’re clear on what a Business Profile is.

Your Business Profile is Google’s term for your Google business listing. Business Profiles appear in Google Maps and in the local results of Google Search.

Business Profiles on Google Search look like this:

Business Profiles on Google Maps look like this:

 

And Business Profiles on mobile look like this:

Creating a Business Profile is the same thing as adding a place to Google Maps—which is something that anyone (including a random stranger or an automated listing generator) can do. All that Google requires is the business name, location, and category. Once Google confirms it is not a duplicate, they will create the Business Profile for that location. The Business Profile is then open to consumers to leave reviews, add photos, ask questions, and even answer questions. The Business Profile may also get populated with information that Google pulls in from across the web.

What this means is, a Business Profile can exist on its own, apart from a Google My Business account. And whether you created your own Business Profile or not, you don’t have the ability to manage the information it displays or the reviews it collects.

That is where Google My Business comes in. By creating a Google My Business account, you can access, customize, manage, and enhance your Business Profile on Google, all still for free, which we’ll get into next.

How to use Google My Business for local marketing

So we’ve established that Google My Business is not your Business Profile, but rather a tool by which you enhance your Business Profile to boost its visibility and effectiveness. Let’s cover the four core ways you can use this Google My Business to make your profile on Google listing a better local marketing tool.

1. Engage with consumers

There are a lot of ways consumers can interact with your Business Profile, and you use your Google My Business account to engage back with them. You can respond to reviews, answer questions, enable direct messaging, and set up associated alerts. You can even use Google My Business to publish posts to your Business Profile, much like you would with Facebook and other social media platforms.

Your Google My Business dashboard is where you can respond to reviews, publish posts, and answer questions asked on your Business Profile.

2. Highlight your business

A Business Profile alone contains limited information about your business. But through your Google My Business account dashboard, you can provide hours, a link to your website, products and pricing, attributes, and other details that make your business unique. You will also use your Google My Business to make edits and updates as needed.

A complete Business Profile offers a complete snapshot of your business, including its best features, right in the SERP.

3. Gain insights

You can use the Google My Business dashboard to gain key insights on your audience and local search performance. In the analytics tab of the platform, you can see the queries customers are using to find your Business Profile, whether they found you on Google Maps or Google Search, a breakdown of actions taken on your listing, and how your photos are performing compared to other profiles in your category.

4. Perform local SEO

Just as Google has algorithms for ranking its ads and websites, it also has one for ranking Business Profiles. Through your Google My Business dashboard, you can incorporate keywords into your Business Profile and perform other optimizations to help it rank in local results, which we’re going to cover next.

Google My Business can help you optimize your Business Profile to show up in the coveted 3-Pack.

How to use Google My Business for SEO

Google Business Profiles are dynamic. Not only do they change form based on platform, but Google will also prioritize sections of your profile according to the term that was searched as well as the type of information most important to consumers in your category. Even better, Google will embolden keywords in the content of your profile that it thinks are relevant.

But there needs to be information to prioritize and keywords to embolden in your profile in the first place. Just as you (or your agency) would use a content management system like WordPress to optimize your website for search engines, Google My Business is used to optimize your profile and expand your reach. How do you use Google My Business for local SEO? Well, since optimizing for Google is essentially optimizing for searchers, it all comes down to the same three things: targeting, quality of information, and trust.

Target your information

To use Google My Business for SEO, make sure to incorporate relevant keywords into your Business Profile so you can tell Google what you’re trying to rank for. Use them in your “from the business” description, your responses to reviews, your answers to questions, and in the posts you publish. Make sure to incorporate them naturally just as you would with any other SEO strategy.

Include keywords in your description, editable through your Google My Business dashboard.

Maintain quality of information

The completeness and accuracy of your Business Profile impacts its rank, so make sure to provide the requested information in every section of your Google My Business dashboard. Especially important here is your contact information, special hours, and attributes.

Build trust

The final approach to using Google My Business for SEO appeals to the trust component of Google’s algorithm. Keep your information updated and accurate as your business evolves. Keep a steady stream of reviews coming in and respond to them. Also, signal to Google that you are active by regularly uploading photos and publishing posts to your Business Profile through Google My Business.

Reviews and responses appear on your Business Profile. Be sure to manage them through your Google My Business dashboard.

SEO is important for any business, but particularly for small businesses that can use local targeting to compete against large competitors on the SERP. Google is making local SEO even easier with its robust Business Profiles, so a Google My Business account is essential for any business trying to maximize visibility in their local market.

How to sign up for Google My Business

A free tool that turns my Business Profile into a power marketer for my business? Where do I sign up?

To get a Google My Business account, go to google.com/business and click “Manage now,” which will take you through the steps of creating an account. Remember, a Google My Business Account does not automatically create a Business Profile—it gives you access to it and the ability to add more to it. So you’ll want to make sure you have an existing Business Profile to access.

Also remember that creating Google My Business account does not give you automatic access to your Business Profile. Once you create and are logged into your Google My Business account, you will then need to locate your separate Business Profile on Google Maps and then select the “Claim this business” or “Own this business?” link seen right on the profile. Once you complete that process, your Google My Business account will then be connected with your Business Profile and under your management.

Get started with Google My Business today

With a clear understanding of exactly what Google My Business is, how it works, and how to use it, you can now see that using this free tool isn’t just a good idea for local marketing but a must. Get your Google My Business account up and running now so your Business Profile can outshine your competitors and attract more customers on the world’s most popular search engine.

Source: WordStream

How Valuable is Your Page? Ask Google!

How Does Google Determine the Value of A Page?

Short answer: By determining how long visitor stays on the page.

Technically speaking: SERP CTR (Search Engine Results Page Click-Through Rate)

What is SERP CTR?  Short answer: It is the page that got viewed because the search engine rendered it to the user.  Google is like a jealous overlord.  If it brings you something, it wants you to enjoy it.  If you do not, it remembers it and will make sure you do not get the same page again (or another person for the same search).

 How can yo make users experience richer?

There are three ways to do this:

• Ensure that the rich snippet page description which appears on the SERPs accurately describes the actual content of the page.
• Make the content of the page available to the visitor as fast as possible. Check the page is fast loading and relevant content is situated “above the fold” (so visitors won’t need to scroll)
• Make content relevant for visitor, not the search engines.

 

Google Analytics – New Dashboard

Google has developed a tool to automate the creation of custom-reporting dashboards for its Analytics website-usage tracking service, the company said on Wednesday.

The new Google Analytics Easy Dashboard Library lets developers create these dashboards without the need for them to learn the ins and outs of the Analytics API (application programming interface) and manually write the code.

Instead, the Analytics Easy Dashboard Library only requires that webmasters register to access the Google APIs console, copy and paste a prebuilt chunk of Javascript code and then tailor the code for the type of data they want it to fetch and the type of chart they want displayed.

“So now you can create custom Google Analytics dashboards very quickly, with minimal code,” wrote Jeetendra Soneja and Nick Mihailovski, from the Google Analytics API Team, in a blog post.

Google built the tool in conjunction with a team of University of California at Irvine students, and the company is now working with another group of students at the university to simplify the tool further.

Google Analytics is a cloud-based application that webmasters use to monitor traffic on their websites and analyze usage in order to determine the effectiveness of different content sections and ads.


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What is Google Analytics and how it works?

Google Analytics is configured by insertion of a tracking code in a block of JavaScript code on each of the pages in your website. This tracking code identifies data about the webpage request and pushes this data to the Google Analytics server. This data can be location, date, time, SERP request and more granular information about the page and requester.


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