SEO

A Guide To Getting It Right

Published

1 year ago

May 14, 2023

When you think of social media marketing, the minds of most practitioners will generally go to sites like Facebook, LinkedIn, and – more recently – TikTok.

But off that beaten path is Reddit, a surprisingly large, robust, and intriguing social media platform that could offer marketers an interesting place to share their message. Provided you’re willing to play by the rules, that is.

What Is Reddit?

You’ve probably at least heard of Reddit. But to most non-“Redditors,” it can be shrouded in some mystery.

So what is it, really?

Referred to as the “front page of the internet,” Reddit is a social news and discussion platform that has become a major player in the digital marketing landscape with 430 million monthly active users.

It is a site where users can share content, engage in discussions, and vote on the quality of content.

One of the most important things to understand is that Reddit is divided into thousands of “subreddits,” each focused on a specific topic. These subreddits cover almost every topic imaginable – from technology and gaming to cooking and fashion – attracting people from all walks of life.

One of the most interesting elements of Reddit is its upvoting and downvoting system for content. The system allows users to vote on the quality of content. “Upvoting” a post or comment means that a user finds it useful, interesting, or valuable – downvoting indicates the opposite.

This system provides a level of transparency and authenticity that is hard to find on other platforms. It gives users a say in what content (paid and organic alike) rises to the top or falls to the bottom of the forum.

To learn more, read this excellent guide about the ins and outs of Reddit.

What Is Reddit’s Target Market?

The target market of Reddit is diverse and varied, encompassing a wide range of interests and demographics.

Reddit’s user base includes people of all ages, genders, and backgrounds, united by shared interests and passions.

Reddit also has a strong international presence, with users worldwide engaging in discussions and sharing content.

The common thread among Reddit’s target market is their passion for content and the desire to engage with like-minded individuals.

Is Reddit Good For Promoting A Business?

Reddit can be a great place for businesses to advertise, provided that they do so effectively.

One of the biggest advantages of advertising on Reddit is the platform’s massive user base, diversity of interests, and pockets of niche communities. This means businesses can target their ads to specific subreddits, ensuring that their content reaches a highly engaged and relevant audience.

By creating valuable and relevant content, engaging with the audience, and targeting the right subreddits, businesses can leverage Reddit’s massive reach and involved user base to achieve their marketing goals.

For digital marketers, understanding each subreddit’s nuances and target audience is crucial to creating effective campaigns that resonate with the target market.

The Challenges Of Marketing On Reddit

Unlike more advertising-oriented social platforms like Facebook or LinkedIn, Reddit is not a place you want to wander into as a new marketer without understanding some of its potential pitfalls.

Content – One of the biggest challenges for businesses is creating content that resonates with Reddit’s user base, which is known for being highly discerning and critical of low-quality content. You can’t simply repurpose content from channels like Facebook and Twitter and find success – you need to think audience-first.
Critique – Reddit’s users can be highly opinionated and vocal about their beliefs, which can lead to negative backlash if a campaign is perceived as tone-deaf or insensitive.
Nuance – Each subreddit on Reddit has its own unique culture and set of rules, which can make it challenging for digital marketers to create effective campaigns that resonate with the platform’s users.
Tools – Seasoned social media marketers may find the advertising tools Reddit offers lacking compared to the larger channels. Unfortunately, Reddit doesn’t provide the same level of automation, conversion tracking, and analytics as Facebook. Still, you can execute campaigns at any stage of the funnel.

Reddit Marketing Best Practices

Set Clear Objectives And KPIs

Before launching your paid advertising campaign on Reddit, setting clear objectives and key performance indicators (KPIs) is crucial.

Are you looking to generate website traffic, increase brand awareness, or drive sales? Once you have a clear objective, you can set KPIs that align with your goals, such as click-through rates (CTRs), conversion rates, or return on ad spend (ROAS).

Choose The Right Ad Format

Reddit offers various ad formats, including sponsored posts, display ads, and video ads. Each ad format has unique strengths and weaknesses, so choosing the format that aligns with your campaign’s goals and target audience is essential.

For example, if you’re looking to drive brand awareness, display ads may be more effective, while if you’re looking to generate leads or sales, sponsored posts may be a better fit.

Develop Content That Resonates

Reddit’s user base is highly discerning and can quickly spot low-quality content.

Well-crafted advertising content can generate upvotes, increase engagement, and drive traffic, leads, and sales. If your content rubs users the wrong way, they won’t be shy about letting you know it.

Advertisers who create authentic, high-quality content can build brand awareness and loyalty on Reddit, translating into a more positive brand perception and customer retention.

Creating quality content on Reddit means:

Researching the target audience – Study the target audience and the subreddits where they are most active. This will help you understand their needs, interests, and preferences and create content that resonates with them. Take time to understand the tone and voice of each subreddit and use it to inform your content development.
Providing value – Make sure that your content provides value to the audience. This could include educational content, behind-the-scenes stories, or using humor to connect with the audience. The key is to create useful, entertaining, or informative content that resonates with the target audience.
Following the rules and guidelines – Each subreddit on Reddit has its own set of rules and guidelines, so it’s important to read and understand them before creating content. Violating the rules can lead to negative feedback or even getting banned from the subreddit, which can hurt a brand’s reputation and credibility.
Engaging with the audience – Responding to comments, answering questions, and participating in discussions related to the content can increase engagement and build trust and loyalty with the audience. It can also provide valuable insights into their needs and preferences, informing future content development.
Using eye-catching visuals – High-quality visuals relevant to the content can increase the likelihood of generating engagement and upvotes. Ensure the visuals are eye-catching and supportive of the message you want to convey.

Target The Right Subreddits

Just as with organic content, targeting the right subreddits is crucial for the success of your paid advertising campaign on Reddit.

Start by researching relevant subreddits using tools like Redditlist or Subreddit Stats.

Reddit also offers various targeting options, including location, interest, and device type, which can help you reach the right audience.

You can increase the likelihood of generating high-quality leads and sales by targeting the right subreddits and using the right targeting options.

Continually Optimize Your Campaign

Regularly monitoring and optimizing your paid advertising campaign on Reddit is critical to its success. Use Reddit’s built-in analytics to track your campaign’s progress and adjust your strategy based on the data.

This can include tweaking your targeting, adjusting your messaging, or changing the visuals to better resonate with your target audience.

Additionally, consider testing different ad formats, targeting options, and messaging to identify what works best for your target audience.

By continually optimizing your campaign, you can ensure you get the most out of your investment and achieve your marketing goals.

Top Brands Using Reddit For Marketing

In addition to the thousands of advertisers across the globe, Reddit’s potential has attracted several major brands, including the likes of Uber, HP, Ulta, Adidas, and Universal Studios.

Personally, I like the HP and Adidas examples for two different reasons.

HP

HP “dipped its toes” into Reddit to help drive subscriptions for its ink replacement service.

This is a great example of a major company taking the leap into the lower part of the funnel!

Screenshot from Reddit, February 2023

Adidas

Adidas used a popular Reddit concept called an “AMA” (Ask Me Anything), where its apparel experts answered community questions about its new line of running shoes.

This was a great example of providing relevant and valuable information and masterful use of Reddit’s content trends.

Screenshot from Reddit, February 2023

Takeaways

Advertising on Reddit is more challenging than doing so on more traditional social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn. It requires more prep work, an intimate understanding of the target audience, and content tailored to the nuance of the platform.

Some advertisers might easily dismiss those requirements as too high of a barrier to entry. And that’s ok.

However, advertisers looking to engage with a supremely passionate, demographically diverse audience will find them on Reddit.

And with a little due diligence, these advertisers can create content that drives not just results, but the respect, appreciation, and loyalty of valuable customers.

More resources:

Featured Image: Nicescene/Shutterstock

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SEO

How To Stop Filter Results From Eating Crawl Budget

Published

17 hours ago

October 3, 2024

Max

How To Find The Right Long-tail Keywords For Articles

Today’s Ask An SEO question comes from Michal in Bratislava, who asks:

“I have a client who has a website with filters based on a map locations. When the visitor makes a move on the map, a new URL with filters is created. They are not in the sitemap. However, there are over 700,000 URLs in the Search Console (not indexed) and eating crawl budget.

What would be the best way to get rid of these URLs? My idea is keep the base location ‘index, follow’ and newly created URLs of surrounded area with filters switch to ‘noindex, no follow’. Also mark surrounded areas with canonicals to the base location + disavow the unwanted links.”

Great question, Michal, and good news! The answer is an easy one to implement.

First, let’s look at what you’re trying and apply it to other situations like ecommerce and publishers. This way, more people can benefit. Then, go into your strategies above and end with the solution.

What Crawl Budget Is And How Parameters Are Created That Waste It

If you’re not sure what Michal is referring to with crawl budget, this is a term some SEO pros use to explain that Google and other search engines will only crawl so many pages on your website before it stops.

If your crawl budget is used on low-value, thin, or non-indexable pages, your good pages and new pages may not be found in a crawl.

If they’re not found, they may not get indexed or refreshed. If they’re not indexed, they cannot bring you SEO traffic.

This is why optimizing a crawl budget for efficiency is important.

Michal shared an example of how “thin” URLs from an SEO point of view are created as customers use filters.

The experience for the user is value-adding, but from an SEO standpoint, a location-based page would be better. This applies to ecommerce and publishers, too.

Ecommerce stores will have searches for colors like red or green and products like t-shirts and potato chips.

These create URLs with parameters just like a filter search for locations. They could also be created by using filters for size, gender, color, price, variation, compatibility, etc. in the shopping process.

The filtered results help the end user but compete directly with the collection page, and the collection would be the “non-thin” version.

Publishers have the same. Someone might be on SEJ looking for SEO or PPC in the search box and get a filtered result. The filtered result will have articles, but the category of the publication is likely the best result for a search engine.

These filtered results can be indexed because they get shared on social media or someone adds them as a comment on a blog or forum, creating a crawlable backlink. It might also be an employee in customer service responded to a question on the company blog or any other number of ways.

The goal now is to make sure search engines don’t spend time crawling the “thin” versions so you can get the most from your crawl budget.

The Difference Between Indexing And Crawling

There’s one more thing to learn before we go into the proposed ideas and solutions – the difference between indexing and crawling.

Crawling is the discovery of new pages within a website.
Indexing is adding the pages that are worthy of showing to a person using the search engine to the database of pages.

Pages can get crawled but not indexed. Indexed pages have likely been crawled and will likely get crawled again to look for updates and server responses.

But not all indexed pages will bring in traffic or hit the first page because they may not be the best possible answer for queries being searched.

Now, let’s go into making efficient use of crawl budgets for these types of solutions.

Using Meta Robots Or X Robots

The first solution Michal pointed out was an “index,follow” directive. This tells a search engine to index the page and follow the links on it. This is a good idea, but only if the filtered result is the ideal experience.

From what I can see, this would not be the case, so I would recommend making it “noindex,follow.”

Noindex would say, “This is not an official page, but hey, keep crawling my site, you’ll find good pages in here.”

And if you have your main menu and navigational internal links done correctly, the spider will hopefully keep crawling them.

Canonicals To Solve Wasted Crawl Budget

Canonical links are used to help search engines know what the official page to index is.

If a product exists in three categories on three separate URLs, only one should be “the official” version, so the two duplicates should have a canonical pointing to the official version. The official one should have a canonical link that points to itself. This applies to the filtered locations.

If the location search would result in multiple city or neighborhood pages, the result would likely be a duplicate of the official one you have in your sitemap.

Have the filtered results point a canonical back to the main page of filtering instead of being self-referencing if the content on the page stays the same as the original category.

If the content pulls in your localized page with the same locations, point the canonical to that page instead.

In most cases, the filtered version inherits the page you searched or filtered from, so that is where the canonical should point to.

If you do both noindex and have a self-referencing canonical, which is overkill, it becomes a conflicting signal.

The same applies to when someone searches for a product by name on your website. The search result may compete with the actual product or service page.

With this solution, you’re telling the spider not to index this page because it isn’t worth indexing, but it is also the official version. It doesn’t make sense to do this.

Instead, use a canonical link, as I mentioned above, or noindex the result and point the canonical to the official version.

Disavow To Increase Crawl Efficiency

Disavowing doesn’t have anything to do with crawl efficiency unless the search engine spiders are finding your “thin” pages through spammy backlinks.

The disavow tool from Google is a way to say, “Hey, these backlinks are spammy, and we don’t want them to hurt us. Please don’t count them towards our site’s authority.”

In most cases, it doesn’t matter, as Google is good at detecting spammy links and ignoring them.

You do not want to add your own site and your own URLs to the disavow tool. You’re telling Google your own site is spammy and not worth anything.

Plus, submitting backlinks to disavow won’t prevent a spider from seeing what you want and do not want to be crawled, as it is only for saying a link from another site is spammy.

Disavowing won’t help with crawl efficiency or saving crawl budget.

How To Make Crawl Budgets More Efficient

The answer is robots.txt. This is how you tell specific search engines and spiders what to crawl.

You can include the folders you want them to crawl by marketing them as “allow,” and you can say “disallow” on filtered results by disallowing the “?” or “&” symbol or whichever you use.

If some of those parameters should be crawled, add the main word like “?filter=location” or a specific parameter.

Robots.txt is how you define crawl paths and work on crawl efficiency. Once you’ve optimized that, look at your internal links. A link from one page on your site to another.

These help spiders find your most important pages while learning what each is about.

Internal links include:

Breadcrumbs.
Menu navigation.
Links within content to other pages.
Sub-category menus.
Footer links.

You can also use a sitemap if you have a large site, and the spiders are not finding the pages you want with priority.

I hope this helps answer your question. It is one I get a lot – you’re not the only one stuck in that situation.

More resources:

Featured Image: Paulo Bobita/Search Engine Journal

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SEO

Ad Copy Tactics Backed By Study Of Over 1 Million Google Ads

Published

2 days ago

October 2, 2024

Max

Ad Copy Tactics Backed By Study Of Over 1 Million Google Ads

Mastering effective ad copy is crucial for achieving success with Google Ads.

Yet, the PPC landscape can make it challenging to discern which optimization techniques truly yield results.

Although various perspectives exist on optimizing ads, few are substantiated by comprehensive data. A recent study from Optmyzr attempted to address this.

The goal isn’t to promote or dissuade any specific method but to provide a clearer understanding of how different creative decisions impact your campaigns.

Use the data to help you identify higher profit probability opportunities.

Methodology And Data Scope

The Optmyzr study analyzed data from over 22,000 Google Ads accounts that have been active for at least 90 days with a minimum monthly spend of $1,500.

Across more than a million ads, we assessed Responsive Search Ads (RSAs), Expanded Text Ads (ETAs), and Demand Gen campaigns. Due to API limitations, we could not retrieve asset-level data for Performance Max campaigns.

Additionally, all monetary figures were converted to USD to standardize comparisons.

Key Questions Explored

To provide actionable insights, we focused on addressing the following questions:

Is there a correlation between Ad Strength and performance?
How do pinning assets impact ad performance?
Do ads written in title case or sentence case perform better?
How does creative length affect ad performance?
Can ETA strategies effectively translate to RSAs and Demand Gen ads?

As we evaluated the results, it’s important to note that our data set represents advanced marketers.

This means there may be selection bias, and these insights might differ in a broader advertiser pool with varying levels of experience.

The Relationship Between Ad Strength And Performance

Google explicitly states that Ad Strength is a tool designed to guide ad optimization rather than act as a ranking factor.

Despite this, marketers often hold mixed opinions about its usefulness, as its role in ad performance appears inconsistent.

Image from author, September 2024

Our data corroborates this skepticism. Ads labeled with an “average” Ad Strength score outperformed those with “good” or “excellent” scores in key metrics like CPA, conversion rate, and ROAS.

This disparity is particularly evident in RSAs, where the ROAS tends to decrease sharply when moving from “average” to “good,” with only a marginal increase when advancing to “excellent.”

Screenshot from author, September 2024

Interestingly, Demand Gen ads also showed a stronger performance with an “average” Ad Strength, except for ROAS.

The metrics for conversion rates in Demand Gen and RSAs were notably similar, which is surprising since Demand Gen ads are typically designed for awareness, while RSAs focus on driving transactions.

Key Takeaways:

Ad Strength doesn’t reliably correlate with performance, so it shouldn’t be a primary metric for assessing your ads.
Most ads with “poor” or “average” Ad Strength labels perform well by standard advertising KPIs.
“Good” or “excellent” Ad Strength labels do not guarantee better performance.

How Does Pinning Affect Ad Performance?

Pinning refers to locking specific assets like headlines or descriptions in fixed positions within the ad. This technique became common with RSAs, but there’s ongoing debate about its efficacy.

Some advertisers advocate for pinning all assets to replicate the control offered by ETAs, while others prefer to let Google optimize placements automatically.

Image from author, September 2024

Our data suggests that pinning some, but not all, assets offers the most balanced results in terms of CPA, ROAS, and CPC. However, ads where all assets are pinned achieve the highest relevance in terms of CTR.

Still, this marginally higher CTR doesn’t necessarily translate into better conversion metrics. Ads with unpinned or partially pinned assets generally perform better in terms of conversion rates and cost-based metrics.

Key Takeaways:

Selective pinning is optimal, offering a good balance between creative control and automation.
Fully pinned ads may increase CTR but tend to underperform in metrics like CPA and ROAS.
Advertisers should embrace RSAs, as they consistently outperform ETAs – even with fully pinned assets.

Title Case Vs. Sentence Case: Which Performs Better?

The choice between title case (“This Is a Title Case Sentence”) and sentence case (“This is a sentence case sentence”) is often a point of contention among advertisers.

Our analysis revealed a clear trend: Ads using sentence case generally outperformed those in title case, particularly in RSAs and Demand Gen campaigns.

Image from author, September 2024

(RSA Data)

Image from author, September 2024

(ETA Data)

Image from author, September 2024

(Demand Gen)

ROAS, in particular, showed a marked preference for sentence case across these ad types, suggesting that a more natural, conversational tone may resonate better with users.

Interestingly, many advertisers still use a mix of title and sentence case within the same account, which counters the traditional approach of maintaining consistency throughout the ad copy.

Key Takeaways:

Sentence case outperforms title case in RSAs and Demand Gen ads on most KPIs.
Including sentence case ads in your testing can improve performance, as it aligns more closely with organic results, which users perceive as higher quality.
Although ETAs perform slightly better with title case, sentence case is increasingly the preferred choice in modern ad formats.

The Impact Of Ad Length On Performance

Ad copy, particularly for Google Ads, requires brevity without sacrificing impact.

We analyzed the effects of character count on ad performance, grouping ads by the length of headlines and descriptions.

Image from author, September 2024

Image from author, September 2024

(RSA Data)

Image from author, September 2024

1727879162 7 Ad Copy Tactics Backed By Study Of Over 1 Million

Image from author, September 2024

(ETA Data)

Image from author, September 2024

1727879163 98 Ad Copy Tactics Backed By Study Of Over 1 Million

Image from author, September 2024

(Demand Gen Data)

Interestingly, shorter headlines tend to outperform longer ones in CTR and conversion rates, while descriptions benefit from moderate length.

Ads that tried to maximize character counts by using dynamic keyword insertion (DKI) or customizers often saw no significant performance improvement.

Moreover, applying ETA strategies to RSAs proved largely ineffective.

In almost all cases, advertisers who carried over ETA tactics to RSAs saw a decline in performance, likely because of how Google dynamically assembles ad components for display.

Key Takeaways:

Shorter headlines lead to better performance, especially in RSAs.
Focus on concise, impactful messaging instead of trying to fill every available character.
ETA tactics do not translate well to RSAs, and attempting to replicate them can hurt performance.

Final Thoughts On Ad Optimizations

In summary, several key insights emerge from this analysis.

First, Ad Strength should not be your primary focus when assessing performance. Instead, concentrate on creating relevant, engaging ad copy tailored to your target audience.

Additionally, pinning assets should be a strategic, creative decision rather than a hard rule, and advertisers should incorporate sentence case into their testing for RSAs and Demand Gen ads.

Finally, focus on quality over quantity in ad copy length, as longer ads do not always equate to better results.

By refining these elements of your ads, you can drive better ROI and adapt to the evolving landscape of Google Ads.

Read the full Ad Strength & Creative Study from Optmyzr.

More resources:

Featured Image: Sammby/Shutterstock

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SEO

Bing Expands Generative Search Capabilities For Complex Queries

Published

2 days ago

October 1, 2024

Max

Bing Expands Generative Search Capabilities For Complex Queries

Microsoft has announced an expansion of Bing’s generative search capabilities.

The update focuses on handling complex, informational queries.

Bing provides examples such as “how to effectively run a one-on-one” and “how can I remove background noise from my podcast recordings.”

Searchers in the United States can access the new features by typing “Bing generative search” into the search bar. This will present a carousel of sample queries.

Screenshot from: blogs.bing.com, October 2024.

A “Deep search” button on the results page activates the generative search function for other searches.

1727808962 226 Bing Expands Generative Search Capabilities For Complex Queries

Screenshot from: blogs.bing.com, October 2024.

Beta Release and Potential Challenges

It’s important to note that this feature is in beta.

Bing acknowledges that you may experience longer loading times as the system works to ensure accuracy and relevance.

The announcement reads:

“While we’re excited to give you this opportunity to explore generative search firsthand, this experience is still being rolled out in beta. You may notice a bit of loading time as we work to ensure generative search results are shown when we’re confident in their accuracy and relevancy, and when it makes sense for the given query. You will generally see generative search results for informational and complex queries, and it will be indicated under the search box with the sentence “Results enhanced with Bing generative search” …”

This is the waiting screen you get after clicking on “Deep search.”