SEO

6 Remarketing Campaign Mistakes You Must Avoid

Published

2 years ago

June 30, 2022

6 Remarketing Campaign Mistakes You Must Avoid

Alongside any PPC effort, it is worth setting up a companion remarketing campaign.

Too often, campaigns target all users with the same ads and the same bids – users who are seeing your ads for the first time and those who have seen them before, or those who have already visited your site through another channel.

However, segmenting an effort into net new users and a remarketing audience will drive better results through a more granular approach.

Improve your PPC campaign performance and boost your conversion rates through remarketing efforts such as RLSA .

However, as you do so, be mindful of these six considerations to avoid common pitfalls.

1. Seek Scale

Don’t assume that there is a large retargetable audience.

Use your site analytics data from other channels to gauge how many monthly repeat visitors exist overall and by business unit or product to allow forecasting available remarketable traffic by your paid search campaigns.

As with any marketing initiative, scale is key.

In some cases, you may find that remarketing volume is actually small.

Thus, if within the typical 30-day window the audience size is small, consider going further out to 60 or even 90 days.

While 1,000 users have been the minimum list size in Google Ads, based on your typical click-through rate (CTR) and conversion rate (CVR) you may need a higher threshold.

For example, if you typically see a 5% CTR and a 2% CVR, 1,000 impressions will, unfortunately, produce just 0.5 conversions.

A million impressions are needed for this situation to gather 10 conversions, a level when things still aren’t that impactful but can get interesting.

2. Don’t Just Sell – Cross-Sell & Upsell

A common assumption is that someone who did not transact may need an extra incentive in the form of repeated and/or more compelling messaging. That may be so.

However, in many cases, they really did gather all the details and decided they did not need what they thought they did.

Many users in their discovery phase are not only researching potential solutions but also reconfirming that the problem they are looking to solve is indeed the right problem to be solving.

When setting up remarketing, test both a sell message and a cross-sell or upsell message.

Give users more reasons to keep you in mind, particularly if your site offers products that are common supplements or complements.

The sell message entails saying the same thing users heard before in a different way: with a more direct call to action and/or an exclusive, one-time offer.

A cross-sell would promote related offerings, while upsell can encourage users to consider a more elaborate offering. They may not end up purchasing this higher-end alternative, but the latter can indirectly highlight the value of the initial option that was considered.

3. Think To Exclude

Sounds obvious? Users who just purchased your product or service would not want to do so again right away. Then again, we have all seen companies retarget us with something we just bought.

Generally, for most B2C campaigns, converters from the last seven to 14 days can be safely excluded from all campaigns except for those with cross-sell goals.

For the best experience, consider the consumption time of your service. The delay before transacting again will vary by product category.

Aspects like seasonality, location of the target, and target ROI will further affect desired frequency for targeting repeat users.

For example, someone booking a summer vacation may not purchase again from you until many months later. One could argue that a person’s planning and consideration will begin sooner.

However, media bought too early on may result in lots of incremental costs reducing your target ROI.

With that, if aiming to motivate past converters to buy more of the same from you, it often makes sense to wait a while before retargeting them.

Cross-selling, on the other hand, can be done immediately after a transaction is made, but also needs careful management to not go on for too long.

Establish a cut-off threshold particularly when a product’s usage makes add-ons irrelevant.

For instance, upselling a traveler on a car rental or room upgrade makes little sense after a vacation has begun. A month or so into a cell phone plan purchase, a converter is unlikely to want upgrades to more extensive plans.

4. Go Long

Remarketing is often thought of as a short-term tactic for shopping cart abandoners or recent site visitors.

However, it is possible to remarket to users who have last visited the site as long as a year ago.

In the drive for new customer acquisition, loyalty nurturing is often overlooked.

Consider consumption patterns and seasonality as you do that.

If someone booked a spring break getaway with you, when is the next time they will start planning one? What is the renewal cycle of the software you provide?

5. Synergies With Other Channels

Remarketing on search, by default, will remarket all users who have been to your site.

In other words, you will target people who have been to your site through other channels – after seeing display ads, interacting on social media, coming from email blasts, etc. – as well as organic search and direct visits.

Consider what messages people have seen and build on them.

If you are feeling particularly advanced (and scale supports it), create remarketing campaigns by channel or sets of channels.

6. Extra Budget Not Required

This will make many CMOs happy. At the start, you won’t need an extra budget for remarketing.

Remember, this is all about targeting people already captured by your current campaigns. Just isolating those repeat searchers and creating new experiences for them.

However, these are the same users you have already been targeting.

Of course, you would want to seek out these users more aggressively and send bid modifiers for these audiences.

That said, unless your remarketing audiences are large and/or you expect CTR to substantially grow, the budget should not need to jump.

An extra budget for remarketing is nice, but in the short run, it is not a requirement. Definitely not to set up some initial tests.

Takeaway

With the looming cookie deprecation, there has been a growing emphasis on first-party data, and remarketing efforts align well with this new direction.

Remarketing solutions align well with supporting first-party data initiatives.

Whether it is using emails to build an audience or using forms to capture user details on the landing page at the start of the conversion journey, structure your remarketing efforts to win twice: First, strive to improve your conversion, then drive synergy with efforts to capture first-party data.

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Featured Image: Photon photo/Shutterstock

Related Topics:Avoid campaign Mistakes Remarketing seo

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SEO

Measuring Content Impact Across The Customer Journey

Published

16 hours ago

April 23, 2024

Max

Measuring Content Impact Across The Customer Journey

Understanding the impact of your content at every touchpoint of the customer journey is essential – but that’s easier said than done. From attracting potential leads to nurturing them into loyal customers, there are many touchpoints to look into.

So how do you identify and take advantage of these opportunities for growth?

Watch this on-demand webinar and learn a comprehensive approach for measuring the value of your content initiatives, so you can optimize resource allocation for maximum impact.

You’ll learn:

Fresh methods for measuring your content’s impact.
Fascinating insights using first-touch attribution, and how it differs from the usual last-touch perspective.
Ways to persuade decision-makers to invest in more content by showcasing its value convincingly.

With Bill Franklin and Oliver Tani of DAC Group, we unravel the nuances of attribution modeling, emphasizing the significance of layering first-touch and last-touch attribution within your measurement strategy.

Check out these insights to help you craft compelling content tailored to each stage, using an approach rooted in first-hand experience to ensure your content resonates.

Whether you’re a seasoned marketer or new to content measurement, this webinar promises valuable insights and actionable tactics to elevate your SEO game and optimize your content initiatives for success.

View the slides below or check out the full webinar for all the details.

SEO

How to Find and Use Competitor Keywords

Published

19 hours ago

April 23, 2024

Entireweb News Bot

Competitor keywords are the keywords your rivals rank for in Google’s search results. They may rank organically or pay for Google Ads to rank in the paid results.

Knowing your competitors’ keywords is the easiest form of keyword research. If your competitors rank for or target particular keywords, it might be worth it for you to target them, too.

There is no way to see your competitors’ keywords without a tool like Ahrefs, which has a database of keywords and the sites that rank for them. As far as we know, Ahrefs has the biggest database of these keywords.

How to find all the keywords your competitor ranks for

Go to Ahrefs’ Site Explorer
Enter your competitor’s domain
Go to the Organic keywords report

The report is sorted by traffic to show you the keywords sending your competitor the most visits. For example, Mailchimp gets most of its organic traffic from the keyword “mailchimp.”

Since you’re unlikely to rank for your competitor’s brand, you might want to exclude branded keywords from the report. You can do this by adding a Keyword > Doesn’t contain filter. In this example, we’ll filter out keywords containing “mailchimp” or any potential misspellings:

Filtering out branded keywords in Organic keywords report

If you’re a new brand competing with one that’s established, you might also want to look for popular low-difficulty keywords. You can do this by setting the Volume filter to a minimum of 500 and the KD filter to a maximum of 10.

Finding popular, low-difficulty keywords in Organic keywords

How to find keywords your competitor ranks for, but you don’t

Go to Competitive Analysis
Enter your domain in the This target doesn’t rank for section
Enter your competitor’s domain in the But these competitors do section

Hit “Show keyword opportunities,” and you’ll see all the keywords your competitor ranks for, but you don’t.

You can also add a Volume and KD filter to find popular, low-difficulty keywords in this report.

How to find keywords multiple competitors rank for, but you don’t

Go to Competitive Analysis
Enter your domain in the This target doesn’t rank for section
Enter the domains of multiple competitors in the But these competitors do section

Competitive analysis report with multiple competitors

You’ll see all the keywords that at least one of these competitors ranks for, but you don’t.

Content gap report with multiple competitors

You can also narrow the list down to keywords that all competitors rank for. Click on the Competitors’ positions filter and choose All 3 competitors:

Selecting all 3 competitors to see keywords all 3 competitors rank for

Go to Ahrefs’ Site Explorer
Enter your competitor’s domain
Go to the Paid keywords report

This report shows you the keywords your competitors are targeting via Google Ads.

Since your competitor is paying for traffic from these keywords, it may indicate that they’re profitable for them—and could be for you, too.

You know what keywords your competitors are ranking for or bidding on. But what do you do with them? There are basically three options.

1. Create pages to target these keywords

You can only rank for keywords if you have content about them. So, the most straightforward thing you can do for competitors’ keywords you want to rank for is to create pages to target them.

However, before you do this, it’s worth clustering your competitor’s keywords by Parent Topic. This will group keywords that mean the same or similar things so you can target them all with one page.

Here’s how to do that:

Export your competitor’s keywords, either from the Organic Keywords or Content Gap report

Paste them into Keywords Explorer
Click the “Clusters by Parent Topic” tab

For example, MailChimp ranks for keywords like “what is digital marketing” and “digital marketing definition.” These and many others get clustered under the Parent Topic of “digital marketing” because people searching for them are all looking for the same thing: a definition of digital marketing. You only need to create one page to potentially rank for all these keywords.

Keywords under the cluster of "digital marketing"

2. Optimize existing content by filling subtopics

You don’t always need to create new content to rank for competitors’ keywords. Sometimes, you can optimize the content you already have to rank for them.

How do you know which keywords you can do this for? Try this:

Export your competitor’s keywords

Paste them into Keywords Explorer
Click the “Clusters by Parent Topic” tab
Look for Parent Topics you already have content about

For example, if we analyze our competitor, we can see that seven keywords they rank for fall under the Parent Topic of “press release template.”

Our competitor ranks for seven keywords that fall under the "press release template" cluster

If we search our site, we see that we already have a page about this topic.

Site search finds that we already have a blog post on press release templates

If we click the caret and check the keywords in the cluster, we see keywords like “press release example” and “press release format.”

Keywords under the cluster of "press release template"

To rank for the keywords in the cluster, we can probably optimize the page we already have by adding sections about the subtopics of “press release examples” and “press release format.”

3. Target these keywords with Google Ads

Paid keywords are the simplest—look through the report and see if there are any relevant keywords you might want to target, too.

For example, Mailchimp is bidding for the keyword “how to create a newsletter.”

If you’re ConvertKit, you may also want to target this keyword since it’s relevant.

If you decide to target the same keyword via Google Ads, you can hover over the magnifying glass to see the ads your competitor is using.

You can also see the landing page your competitor directs ad traffic to under the URL column.

Learn more

Check out more tutorials on how to do competitor keyword analysis:

SEO

Google Confirms Links Are Not That Important

Published

1 day ago

April 23, 2024

Max

Google confirms that links are not that important anymore

Google’s Gary Illyes confirmed at a recent search marketing conference that Google needs very few links, adding to the growing body of evidence that publishers need to focus on other factors. Gary tweeted confirmation that he indeed say those words.

Background Of Links For Ranking

Links were discovered in the late 1990’s to be a good signal for search engines to use for validating how authoritative a website is and then Google discovered soon after that anchor text could be used to provide semantic signals about what a webpage was about.

One of the most important research papers was Authoritative Sources in a Hyperlinked Environment by Jon M. Kleinberg, published around 1998 (link to research paper at the end of the article). The main discovery of this research paper is that there is too many web pages and there was no objective way to filter search results for quality in order to rank web pages for a subjective idea of relevance.

The author of the research paper discovered that links could be used as an objective filter for authoritativeness.

Kleinberg wrote:

“To provide effective search methods under these conditions, one needs a way to filter, from among a huge collection of relevant pages, a small set of the most “authoritative” or ‘definitive’ ones.”

This is the most influential research paper on links because it kick-started more research on ways to use links beyond as an authority metric but as a subjective metric for relevance.

Objective is something factual. Subjective is something that’s closer to an opinion. The founders of Google discovered how to use the subjective opinions of the Internet as a relevance metric for what to rank in the search results.

What Larry Page and Sergey Brin discovered and shared in their research paper (The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine – link at end of this article) was that it was possible to harness the power of anchor text to determine the subjective opinion of relevance from actual humans. It was essentially crowdsourcing the opinions of millions of website expressed through the link structure between each webpage.

What Did Gary Illyes Say About Links In 2024?

At a recent search conference in Bulgaria, Google’s Gary Illyes made a comment about how Google doesn’t really need that many links and how Google has made links less important.

Patrick Stox tweeted about what he heard at the search conference:

” ‘We need very few links to rank pages… Over the years we’ve made links less important.’ @methode #serpconf2024″

Google’s Gary Illyes tweeted a confirmation of that statement:

“I shouldn’t have said that… I definitely shouldn’t have said that”

Why Links Matter Less

The initial state of anchor text when Google first used links for ranking purposes was absolutely non-spammy, which is why it was so useful. Hyperlinks were primarily used as a way to send traffic from one website to another website.

But by 2004 or 2005 Google was using statistical analysis to detect manipulated links, then around 2004 “powered-by” links in website footers stopped passing anchor text value, and by 2006 links close to the words “advertising” stopped passing link value, links from directories stopped passing ranking value and by 2012 Google deployed a massive link algorithm called Penguin that destroyed the rankings of likely millions of websites, many of which were using guest posting.

The link signal eventually became so bad that Google decided in 2019 to selectively use nofollow links for ranking purposes. Google’s Gary Illyes confirmed that the change to nofollow was made because of the link signal.

Google Explicitly Confirms That Links Matter Less

In 2023 Google’s Gary Illyes shared at a PubCon Austin that links were not even in the top 3 of ranking factors. Then in March 2024, coinciding with the March 2024 Core Algorithm Update, Google updated their spam policies documentation to downplay the importance of links for ranking purposes.

Google March 2024 Core Update: 4 Changes To Link Signal

The documentation previously said:

“Google uses links as an important factor in determining the relevancy of web pages.”

The update to the documentation that mentioned links was updated to remove the word important.

Links are not just listed as just another factor:

“Google uses links as a factor in determining the relevancy of web pages.”

At the beginning of April Google’s John Mueller advised that there are more useful SEO activities to engage on than links.

Mueller explained:

“There are more important things for websites nowadays, and over-focusing on links will often result in you wasting your time doing things that don’t make your website better overall”

Finally, Gary Illyes explicitly said that Google needs very few links to rank webpages and confirmed it.

I shouldn’t have said that… I definitely shouldn’t have said that
— Gary 鯨理／경리 Illyes (so official, trust me) (@methode) April 19, 2024
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Why Google Doesn’t Need Links

The reason why Google doesn’t need many links is likely because of the extent of AI and natural language undertanding that Google uses in their algorithms. Google must be highly confident in its algorithm to be able to explicitly say that they don’t need it.

Way back when Google implemented the nofollow into the algorithm there were many link builders who sold comment spam links who continued to lie that comment spam still worked. As someone who started link building at the very beginning of modern SEO (I was the moderator of the link building forum at the #1 SEO forum of that time), I can say with confidence that links have stopped playing much of a role in rankings beginning several years ago, which is why I stopped about five or six years ago.

Read the research papers

Authoritative Sources in a Hyperlinked Environment – Jon M. Kleinberg (PDF)

The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine

Featured Image by Shutterstock/RYO Alexandre