Google strikes again..this could be neat

Google launches Ads Added by AdWords pilot: What we know so far

In the new test, ads based on existing ad and landing page content are added to ad groups by Google.

Ginny Marvin on January 31, 2017 at 12:38 pm     

• Automation is nothing new in AdWords, but this month, Google launched a pilot that adds new text ads to advertisers’ accounts. Dubbed Ads Added by AdWords, the program started on January 26.

Not surprisingly, this news has set off alarm bells among paid search managers that worry about Google usurping control over the ad creation and testing process. Here is what we know so far about this test.
The initial set of advertisers were notified of the pilot on January 12. For those that chose to participate, ads were added to ad groups two weeks later, on January 26, at which time a second wave of advertisers were notified about the pilot. Currently, 2,000 accounts have been selected for the test. Each has a two-week opt-out window via a form. If you do not receive an email, you haven’t been selected for the pilot.
What accounts were considered for this program? Google looked at campaigns with ad rotation settings of either “Optimize for clicks” or “Optimize for conversions” that have ad groups with few ads in them.
If you’ve opted out of automated extensions or are in a vertical with privacy sensitivities such as pharma, your account was not selected for this program.
How are the ads generated? We’re told that for the test, the ads were generated by people (as opposed to auto-generated) based on the existing ads in the account and the landing page content. The ads went through review by the product team, among others, for quality assurance. The sales teams were also involved in creative review and account selection for the pilot.
From the Help Center page on this new program, we also know that any ads generated for the pilot will be labeled “Added by AdWords.” In the example below (yes, all of the ads are terrible, but try to look past that for now), Google has added two test ads in an ad group that had just one ad. Notice that the headlines, description and paths are all being tested.

Google says on that Help Center page, “We believe that adding more ads to the affected ad groups can improve these ad groups’ performance by 5 to 15%.” The new ads are set to run indefinitely, and Google recommends pilot participants not pause the ads. Theoretically, if they perform worse (based on conversion or click-through rates), the ads will be shown less. But certainly, review the ads if you’re participating in the test, as Google also advises.
This program obviously raises more questions about advertiser control and the role of machine learning in ad creation. If Google deems the pilot successful and rolls out Ads Added by AdWords more broadly, it’s hard to see how the current ad creation and vetting process can scale without automation. One can assume that the machines will be learning from this pilot.
If you think you might miss the notification email from Google about this test, Frederick Vallaeys has written a script for MCC accounts will send an email if it finds automatic ads: https://gist.github.com/siliconvallaeys/a42e247d7923a3181b0a9eb7332fdbad

Sales

I like this post and believe in it:
Most people don’t realize how important selling is—unless your paycheck depends on it! Every time I mention selling, I always hear, “It’s not for me”, “You have to have knack for sales”, or “I just can’t do sales” - but this can’t be farther from the truth.
Salespeople aren’t the only ones selling something. In my latest book, You Don’t Have to Be a Shark, the premise is simple: great salespeople are made, not born, and no one achieves success in life without knowing how to sell. Think of the last time you convinced your kids to finish their vegetables or convinced your parents to let you borrow the car for the weekend - believe or not, you’re selling something! On Shark Tank, entrepreneurs have to sell themselves just as much as their business because we invest in them.
Regardless of what you’re selling, it’s easier than most people think. Just keep the following 5 tips in mind…

The first thing you’re selling is yourself.

Forget about the product or service. If whoever you’re selling to doesn’t like you, they’re not going to listen to you. Make sure you know the product and present yourself well. Be the salesperson you’d buy something from.

Listen more than you talk.

Bad salespeople can’t get over how amazing their product is—they go on and on about it! But good salespeople listen to what their clients are saying. They pay attention to the clients’ needs from the start and present accordingly.

Know who to sell to.

If you’re selling a widget that costs $50K, don’t try to sell it to the guy whose widget budget is $2k. A common mistake salespeople make is trying to sell to anyone and everyone. Make sure whatever you’re selling fulfills your potential client’s needs and is realistic for them. You’re much likely to get that sale!

Understand what motivates the other side.

Why should people care about what you’re selling? How is your product or service providing value to them? Pay attention to what’s driving your potential client to take your meeting in the first place and address that in your pitch.

Keep it simple.

Don’t overcomplicate your pitch just because you want to sound more knowledgeable. The mark of true knowledge in anything is how well you can explain to the average person. Keep your pitch simple and under 30 seconds—practice your elevator pitch!
The key to selling successfully is to think about the person you’re selling to. Make your approach about their needs and think about how they’ll feel after the pitch/meeting. There is no such thing as a ‘natural-born salesperson’. Take it from me - anyone can learn to be good at sales, including you!
To your success,
Robert Herjavec

More ways to make your website rank better

The following is very true but misses a big point and that is some customers like the images that cause the site to load a bit slower. Remember these are just suggestions:

Mistake 3: Not prioritizing page speed

Page speed isn’t just something that only obsessive developers need to worry about anymore. Today, Google places a huge emphasis on its importance, and it has tremendous and proven subconscious impact on visitors.
According to a study done by Amazon, a difference of just 100ms—a unit of time that the ordinary human can’t even perceive, was enough to reduce their sales by 1%. If that tiny unit of time has that much direct impact on sales, what kind impact do you think an extra second or more will have?
So how do you design the fastest website possible? You start with clean, efficient HTML and CSS, and then minimize plugins and http requests, optimize your media, minify CSS and JavaScript, and implement caching. There’s always room for continued improvement.
In a 2016 episode of Webcology, Jon Henshaw shared some of the techniques he used to dramatically speed up the Raven Tools website, and the numbers he achieved are, in a word, enviable.

While I probably wouldn’t go quite as far as Jon did, this episode shows just how far a little creativity can take you. There are several techniques you can use to drastically improve page speed, including:

• Minimizing http requests
• Optimizing media
• Reduce redirects
• Minimizing widgets
• Utilizing caching
• Enable compression
• Minimizing plugins
• Sticking to system fonts
• Minimizing ad scripts
• Using sprites
• Minifying CSS and JavaScript

Web mistakes not to make or what to look for!

I found the following article interesting:

Mistake 2: Not thoroughly testing all design elements

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen a website that is gorgeous when viewed on a desktop, but degrades into a steaming pile of poo when viewed on a mobile device.
When we design a website, we should be testing it several times in multiple browsers and screen sizes so we don’t encounter any surprises at the end. But we also need to test everything again on a staging server once it’s completed. It should also be tested yet again after it’s launched and made publicly available.
This may seem like overkill, but it’s easy to make a small CSS fix that ends up creating even more problems. It happens all of the time, even to me.
If you don’t take the time to review the entire website after completion, you may miss serious issues because you’ve “already checked that part.”
Minor issues to check for include:

• Margin and/or padding issues
• Font sizes causing odd line breaks
• Element sizes at certain screen sizes
• Improperly sized images
• Color or transparency issues

Individually, these issues can have a slight, but cumulative negative impact on the user experience. You can get away with a few, but remember that they add up quickly, leading to shorter time-on-site and higher bounce rates, which means less revenue and diminishing organic ranking.
Some of the more serious issues that could render your website completely unusable include:

• Positioning issues (absolute, relative, and fixed)
• Float issues
• Z-index issues
• Unclosed curly braces in CSS
• JavaScript errors

Before declaring “mission complete,” you should test your website in multiple browsers and on multiple devices, including:

• Google Chrome
• Firefox
• Microsoft Edge / Internet Explorer
• Safari
• At least one iOS and Android device, but preferably two (A phone and a tablet)

There are tools available for testing in almost every environment imaginable, but web browsers have come a long way over the last decade, so you really don’t need them as long as you can test in the most common browsers on desktop, as well as on one or more iOS and Android devices.
You should also use Google’s Mobile Friendly Test because it can identify specific criteria Google is looking for, including tap target size, touch element proximity, and viewport size. You don’t necessarily need to run all of your pages through it, but you should run at least on of each page that has unique design elements.

Being noticed

I made a call on a company, it was a neat small company engaged in an industry that is a tough one to be in but very much an American company. Right now I think a large American flag pained all over your cards and brochures and website is a tremendous way to be noticed at least here in the USA. People on the whole are very patriotic so seeing that flag can potentially bring you business. Let people know that you employ fellow Americans and citizens of your city and county. Let everyone know that by purchasing from you, you are boosting the local economy.

So if possible, buy local and buy American and you will be supporting neighbors and potentially friends!

Organic rankings are they necessary?

Do organic keyword rankings matter anymore?

With all the ways search engine results pages have evolved over the years, columnist Julian Connors explores the question of whether SEO is still a wise investment.

Julian Connors on January 26, 2017 at 11:58 am

High keyword rankings are the most sought-after achievement in the world of search engine optimization (SEO). Small businesses and brands alike strive to obtain the first organic listing in search results because of the lucrative traffic and lead opportunities that are associated with this position.
But with the evolution of paid advertising and expansion of universal search, as well as Google’s continuous efforts to provide consumers with content that resolves their demands directly in search results, the opportunities attached to traditional keyword rankings are diminishing at an alarming rate.
In today’s search landscape, SEOs and digital marketing specialists have to consider whether it’s worth the amount of time and resources it takes to achieve premier organic rankings, considering the click-through rates (CTR) associated with organic rankings that are positioned under PLAs, local results and other forms of content.

More to come!

SEO what is good and bad!

Good goals:

• I want to get in front of a lot of people who are researching this, and so we need traffic from these specific groups. I know that they perform searches for this. Great.
• We're trying to boost revenue, and we're trying to boost it through new sales and SEO is a sales driving channel. Fine, great.
• We're trying to boost downloads or free sign-ups or free trials. Also a fine goal.
• We're trying to boost sentiment for our brand. Maybe if you Googled some of our branded terms today, there are some poor reviews, there's lots of good reviews that rank below them, and we want to push the good reviews up and the bad reviews down. Fine. Sentiment, that could be something you're driving as well. You know a lot of people are researching your brand or branded terms. Those are all good goals.

Bad goals:

• We just want traffic, more traffic. Why? Well, because we want it. Terrible, terrible goal. Traffic is not a goal in and of itself. If you say, "Well, we want more traffic because we know search traffic converts well for us and here are the statistics on it," fine, terrific. Now it's a revenue driving thing.
• Rankings alone, unfortunately this is a vanity thing that many people have where they want to rank for something simply because they want to rank for it. Usually a bad sign for SEO companies considering clients. You shouldn't have that on your goals list. That's not a positive goal.
• Beating a particular competitor out for specific keywords or phrases. Again, not a great goal. Doesn't drive directly to revenue. Doesn't drive directly to organizational goals.
• Vanity metrics. I still see people who are saying, "Hey, does anyone know a great SEO company that can help bring our domain authority up or our Majestic trust flow up or, worst of all, our Google PageRank up?" Google dropped PageRank years ago. It's terrible. Vanity metrics, bad ideas too.

Part one this was by Rand Fish.  More to come.

I have heard it all over the years and that is why I mostly hear the bad goals and not as many good ones. The bottom line is often I have to teach people the good things to want from SEO. I like this one a lot 

• We're trying to boost revenue, and we're trying to boost it through new sales and SEO is a sales driving channel. Fine, great.

Why are yo i business and that is to boost your revenues and sales!

OK more to come soon.

Joe