SEO

How To Use Standard & Custom Markup

Published

2 years ago

June 2, 2022

If you dig deep enough, you’ll find a good story embedded in pretty much everything.

One of the more interesting that I’ve been fortunate enough to witness is the story of Wix for structured data (and I’ve seen more than my fair share of SEO tools).

On the surface, you would think a CMS and structured data would make for a pretty lousy story, but it’s only a matter of digging deep enough.

Here’s what you need to know about working with structured data on a Wix site and how we got there.

A Post On Wix Structured Data – Why Now?

In fewer than three years, Wix went from supporting little by way of structured data to offering SEO pros and site owners the ability to do nearly whatever they want with relative ease.

Due to recent platform updates, any content on the internet around this topic is now out of date.

But I’m also writing this because, in its own weird way, it tells the story of SEO coming into its own and becoming a focus for so many major corporations and platforms over the past few years.

Here’s a quick timeline of how Wix’s structured data capabilities have evolved:

January 2020: Wix began creating out-of-the-box markup for vertical pages.
January 2020: Structured Data API introduced to Velo, Wix’s dev tool.
January 2021: Additional verticals get out-of-the-box markup.
February 2021: Customizable structured data on Wix static pages opened to all users.
August 2021: Users received the ability to add more than one markup per page and edit prefabricated markup at the page-type level.
February 2022: Wix sites with an updated physical address automatically have local business markup applied to the site.
March 2022: Product image markup added by default to out-of-the-box product markup.
April 2022: Wix’s out-of-the-box markup for vertical pages becomes customizable without using a dev tool for single pages.

How did this happen?

It came about because SEO became a C-level priority and structured data was the logical place to make that priority a reality.

This is what I was alluding to earlier: How Wix evolved around structured data tells the more recent story of SEO.

In this column, you’ll learn how structured data works on a Wix site and how it corresponds to how significant SEO has become as an industry.

This significance is the overarching catalyst for our more recent developments.

The Challenges Of Solving Structured Data For Wix Sites

Making structured data implementation accessible and scalable for a robust platform was not easy. I say robust not to use embellishing marketing terminology but because of the construction of Wix as a platform.

Essentially, you have your main pages for the site (static pages).

Pages, such as your homepage and about page, are “owned” by the team responsible for the main Wix Editor.

Wix offers, however, all sorts of page types, from product pages to blog pages to niche verticals, such as restaurant and fitness pages.

Adding any of these pages means you need to add the “app” for the page type to your Wix site.

To run a blog on your site, you need to add the Wix blog app to create those dynamic blog pages, for example.

Of course, each “app” or vertical is run by its own team, often with unique technical considerations.

Now to make matters just a bit more complicated, there are static pages within the Wix Editor.

You manage vertical pages (which, for this post, is how I will refer to pages such as product pages, courses, blog pages, forums, etc.) from the Wix dashboard.

Wix’s vertical pages are managed within the dashboard, not the Wix Editor. Wix Dashboard Page Manager

To create an across-the-board change to structured data implementation, you make the change across two different sub-platforms within Wix (the Wix Editor and the Wix dashboard) and across any multiple (and unique) verticals.

Let’s make the problem more complicated: Wix has all sorts of users.

There are business owners with little technical know-how and professional developers using an in-built full-stack dev tool called Velo to build sites.

How do you cater to both?

Once we got up and running with improving structured data in a serious way (circa early 2020), we were left in a peculiar situation: Wix offered out-of-the-box markup for a variety of dynamic verticals ranging from courses to products to the blog, but without an easy way for customization.

Users had to rely on our dev tool to make changes to the markup we created.

This doesn’t work for business owners and it doesn’t work for many SEO experts.

And in either case, it’s not the most straightforward or streamlined approach.

Moreover, prefabricated markup at the folder level is great until you need to change the markup for a specific page within that group.

Again, you could, but you needed our dev tool, leading you to the same problem.

Out-Of-The-Box Structured Data Markup On Wix

Now let’s talk about solutions. We’ll start with the initial offering we created to make structured data scalable and help site owners who don’t have an SEO background – out-of-the-box markup.

There are a set of pages in Wix that (again) I will refer to as “vertical pages” throughout this post.

These are dynamic pages part of the various core verticals or “dynamic page types” Wix offers.

These verticals include:

Product pages (i.e., Wix Store).
Blog pages.
Courses.
Events.
Forums.

Wix automatically creates Rich Result-optimized JSON-LD structured data markup based on best practice recommendations from Google for these page types.

You don’t need to add any structured data markup to gain rich results – Wix handles that for you.

Since Wix is a closed-CMS, we understand the structure of vertical pages because we built these pages and can automatically create markup.

So, when your client creates a new event page, we can pull the necessary information from the page to create Event markup automatically.

The same is true for product pages, courses, forums, etc.

This is helpful for two reasons:

It can be a major time-saver when initially working on a site.
It can be a major time-saver when Google changes its rich result requirements.

To the latter, when Google changes its structured data requirements for rich result eligibility, you don’t need to start making changes to what can be hundreds (if not thousands) of pages.

When relying on Wix’s out-of-the-box markup, Wix’s SEO product team will implement these changes so that users don’t have to.

More recently, Wix’s automated markup already included Google’s new rich result eligibility requirements:

For those who despise yellow warnings in SC: @Wix already adds event locations using the Place attribute in our markup (& defines online events).
Thus, when you list the event as either a physical location or as being online we automatically add the appropriate requirements pic.twitter.com/GpdJSUJmXx
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— Mordy Oberstein 🇺🇦 (@MordyOberstein) March 23, 2022

However, what about pages where Wix does not automatically create markup?

And, of course, what about instances where you want to either edit or override the markup Wix creates for you?

Creating & Customizing Structured Data Markup On Wix

Providing out-of-the-box markup solves some problems but, at the same time, can cause new ones.

What if you don’t want to use the implementation we created for you?

And, what if you want to create markup where we didn’t create any for you?

This is where it gets a little interesting.

Remember, Wix is fundamentally a website builder.

The SEO functionality will, at times, need to align with how the platform itself is constructed.

To that end, there is not one linear procedure for customizing structured data on a Wix site.

I hate to employ an SEO cliche, but it all depends.

In this case, it depends on the type of page you are working with and your goals.

We can essentially bucket structured data implementation for Wix sites into one of the following tasks:

Inserting custom markup on Wix static pages.
Editing or overriding the out-of-the-box markup created on vertical pages.
Implementing markup at scale.
Adding multiple markups to a page.

Creating Custom Markup On Wix Static Pages

With markup customization, we started with the site’s main pages (its static pages) because it was the path of least “complication.”

Not only were static pages the “simplest” page type for us to open up markup customization for, but they are also the simplest when discussing structured data implementation on Wix.

You can add whatever markup you want directly in the Wix Editor on these pages.

It’s pretty straightforward.

Once the Wix Editor is open, select the page you want to work with and open the SEO Panel by clicking where it says “SEO Settings,” as shown below:

Screenshot from Wix, May 2022 SEO Settings in Wix Editor

Once you do so, the full panel will appear and you can select “Advanced SEO.”

Once there, you will see the field to drop in the JSON-LD code:

Screenshot from Wix, May 2022 Edit markup on Wix editor

What if you want to add more than one markup to the page?

I’ll get to that shortly.

First, let’s deal with customizing Wix’s automated markup.

Editing & Overriding Wix’s Automated Markup

Once we open up the platform to structured data customization (at least without using a dev tool), we get to the next challenge – the markup we created for you and your desire to customize it.

Wix automatically creates markup for many of a site’s vertical pages.

If you create a product page via the Wix Store application, Product markup is automatically added to the page (again, since we designed the construct of the page, we understand what information to pull into the markup automatically).

But what if you want to customize this markup or disregard it altogether?

Bulk Schema Edits By Page Type

Until the recent past, you had to rely on Velo, Wix’s dev tool, to make bulk edits to your structured data markup.

However, it is now possible to do it from the Wix dashboard (as opposed to the Editor, as vertical pages are managed via the dashboard, whereas static pages are managed in the Editor).

Once you access the SEO Tools within the dashboard, select the page type you want to customize the markup for.

Remember, we’re working with the site at the page-type level here, so any changes you make will apply across the board to all pages of that type.

For this example, I’m going to work with product pages.

Screenshot from Wix, May 2022 SEO settings for Wix product pages

With the page type selected, you can exclude the markup from all pages within the vertical (again, in this case, all product pages):

Screenshot from Wix, May 2022 Exclude structured data markup Wix SEO settings

Conversely, you customize the existing automated markup by clicking Preview Preset:

Screenshot from Wix, May 2022 Preview button Wix structured data markup

This will bring up a preview of the markup code. From here, you need to click on Convert to custom markup:

Screenshot from Wix, May 2022 Edit Wix automated structured data markup

Now’s where the fun starts. You can add variables from the available dropdown list:

Screenshot from Wix, May 2022 Add variable to Wix structured data markup

Or, you can add whatever custom code you want right in the field:

Screenshot from Wix, May 2022 Adding new markup on Wix

Notice that if you enter an invalid code, the field will immediately indicate that there is an error.

As stated, all of these capabilities are not for specific pages. Any change here impacts all of the pages within the folder.

But, what if you want to leave the pages in the folder alone and customize the markup on a few exceptions?

This leads us to our most recent structured data update, which has been quite a popular request of Wix users.

Customizing Structured Data On A Single Vertical Page

Things were moving along quite nicely, but there was still one major snag in the “Wix markup customization experience” – tailoring the automated markup on single vertical pages.

This was, in fact, a major pain point for a lot of our users.

It was also a more complicated problem to solve internally.

As of April 2022, it became possible to update a single vertical page’s markup while leaving the rest of the pages within the folder as is. This was really one of the last major customization roadblocks for us to solve.

(For the record, this post is not written in chronological order, so there are still other pain points that we’ll soon get to.)

Before this update, the only way to work with the markup on a single dynamic vertical page was by using Velo (Wix’s dev tool), making the process less efficient than it should have been.

While static pages are managed in the Editor, editing the markup for a specific vertical page is done within the Wix dashboard.

Keeping with products pages, to customize the out-of-the-box markup of a specific page, first select the vertical from within the dashboard, select a specific page, and click on the Edit SEO settings button:

Screenshot from Wix, May 2022 SEO settings for Wix individual product page

This will open the SEO Panel, where you can access the settings for structured data via the Advanced tab.

Once you have that open, access the markup settings and click to exclude the automated markup from that specific page:

Screenshot from Wix, May 2022 Advanced SEO settings tab in Wix dashboard

You might be asking, but isn’t that only half the problem?

Don’t you need to create new custom markup to replace the out-of-the-box markup that we just excluded from the page?

The answer is yes, we do!

Just click Add New Markup from the panel and paste your code into the field that pops up:

Screenshot from Wix, May 2022 Adding new structured data markup in Wix dashboard

Wait a second, does this mean you can add more than one markup for a page (if you’ve been following the screenshots, the option to add a new markup was there the whole time, not just after I excluded the automated code)?

Short answer: Yes.

Before we get to that, there’s another question to address: If I want to exclude Wix’s out-of-the-box markup for the entire subfolder, can I create new markup at scale, or do I need to do it page-by-page?

Creating & Customizing Wix Markup At Scale

To be honest, we’ve already indirectly covered some of the scalability when using Wix to implement structured data markup. As we’ve already seen, you can either exclude or customize the automated markup across all pages within a vertical.

In cases where you exclude the automated markup across the board, you can create a custom markup that applies across all of the pages within a vertical to replace it.

Once the markup is excluded from a given page type, use the SEO Settings (as found within the Wix dashboard under SEO Tools) to add a new markup and paste in whatever code you would like:

Screenshot from Wix, May 2022 Adding structured data markup in Wix SEO settings

Hit apply and you have just added custom markup for all pages of that type in a single click.

Great, can I do that and add another markup to all pages of a single type?

In other words, let’s talk about adding multiple markups to a single page.

Adding Multiple Markups To Wix Pages

As we began to open up the Wix platform for structured data markup customization, we knew that one limitation was going to be the inability to add multiple markups to a single page.

However, from a development and infrastructure standpoint, it made sense to tackle this at the same time as opening up our out-of-the-box markup for customization.

This means developing the ability to add more than one markup to vertical pages and static pages, along with the ability to customize the out-of-the-box markup.

For static pages, the SEO Panel in the Editor presents an option to add a new markup. After that, you can keep adding and adding new markups:

Screenshot from Wix, May 2022 Adding multiple markups in Wix Editor

When you’re working with a single vertical page within the dashboard, you have the same options within the SEO Panel there:

Screenshot from Wix, May 2022 Adding multiple markups to Wix vertical page

So, if you want to exclude the out-of-the-box Product markup completely, custom create the markup, and then throw FAQ markup on top of that for a single page, you can certainly do so, as was shown earlier.

For example, here’s what you could do with this capability: Let’s say you sell cookware and offer your cooking course on all of your product pages. You can custom create Event markup and apply it to all of your product pages in one shot:

Screenshot from Wix, May 2022 Adding multiple markups to Wix at scale

Here again, you’ve customized what could be thousands of pages in three to four clicks.

One Last Gap: Custom Dynamic Pages

There is still one gap we have left to close.

There is one often used core type of page that still requires our dev tool (Velo) to create structured data, and those are custom dynamic pages.

Custom dynamic pages are pages you create as part of a larger dataset or custom collection.

Let’s say you have a section on your site for the latest industry news but want to keep it separate from your blog. You can use the Wix Content Manager to create a set of dynamic pages to manage this section of your site.

And while you can do things like custom-set the title tag or meta description within the SEO Panel for these pages, we do not yet support structured data implementation unless you use our dev tool.

SEO settings panel Wix custom dynamic pages

The SEO settings for custom dynamic pages include your title tag and meta description but not the implementation of structured data. SEO settings panel Wix custom dynamic pages

While there is not yet a streamlined way to implement structured data on these pages, either through the Wix Editor or Dashboard, there is an API in Velo that is dedicated to structured data.

Sample code from Wix’s Velo Structured Data API. Wix Velo structured data code

So, if you are working with custom dynamic pages within Wix, it’s important to understand the limitation and the way to work around it – until we get to supporting markup customization within the Wix dashboard.

Summing Up Wix Structured Data Implementation

I know I’ve thrown a lot of information at you. Here’s a summary of some of the key points and capabilities outlined above (because at least one section of this post should have some glimmer of brevity).

You can customize markup on Wix static pages and Wix vertical pages in two locations; the former within the Wix Editor and the latter inside the Wix dashboard.
You can add more than one markup to Wix static and vertical pages.
You can edit and override the out-of-the-box markup Wix creates on many of its vertical pages, both at the page-type level and for specific pages within a folder.
Implementing structured data markup on custom dynamic pages still requires the Wix dev tool, Velo.

Of course, there are still various things we have on our roadmap to continue evolving our structured data capabilities.

Wix is always looking to improve our structured data offering and would be happy to hear your thoughts and feedback.

More resources:

Featured Image: ra2 studio/Shutterstock

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SEO

Reddit Post Ranks On Google In 5 Minutes

Published

16 hours ago

April 15, 2024

Max

Google apparently ranks Reddit posts within minutes

Google’s Danny Sullivan disputed the assertions made in a Reddit discussion that Google is showing a preference for Reddit in the search results. But a Redditor’s example proves that it’s possible for a Reddit post to rank in the top ten of the search results within minutes and to actually improve rankings to position #2 a week later.

Discussion About Google Showing Preference To Reddit

A Redditor (gronetwork) complained that Google is sending so many visitors to Reddit that the server is struggling with the load and shared an example that proved that it can only take minutes for a Reddit post to rank in the top ten.

That post was part of a 79 post Reddit thread where many in the r/SEO subreddit were complaining about Google allegedly giving too much preference to Reddit over legit sites.

The person who did the test (gronetwork) wrote:

“…The website is already cracking (server down, double posts, comments not showing) because there are too many visitors.
…It only takes few minutes (you can test it) for a post on Reddit to appear in the top ten results of Google with keywords related to the post’s title… (while I have to wait months for an article on my site to be referenced). Do the math, the whole world is going to spam here. The loop is completed.”
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Reddit Post Ranked Within Minutes

Another Redditor asked if they had tested if it takes “a few minutes” to rank in the top ten and gronetwork answered that they had tested it with a post titled, Google SGE Review.

gronetwork posted:

“Yes, I have created for example a post named “Google SGE Review” previously. After less than 5 minutes it was ranked 8th for Google SGE Review (no quotes). Just after Washingtonpost.com, 6 authoritative SEO websites and Google.com’s overview page for SGE (Search Generative Experience). It is ranked third for SGE Review.”

It’s true, not only does that specific post (Google SGE Review) rank in the top 10, the post started out in position 8 and it actually improved ranking, currently listed beneath the number one result for the search query “SGE Review”.

Screenshot Of Reddit Post That Ranked Within Minutes

Anecdotes Versus Anecdotes

Okay, the above is just one anecdote. But it’s a heck of an anecdote because it proves that it’s possible for a Reddit post to rank within minutes and get stuck in the top of the search results over other possibly more authoritative websites.

hankschrader79 shared that Reddit posts outrank Toyota Tacoma forums for a phrase related to mods for that truck.

Google’s Danny Sullivan responded to that post and the entire discussion to dispute that Reddit is not always prioritized over other forums.

Danny wrote:

“Reddit is not always prioritized over other forums. [super vhs to mac adapter] I did this week, it goes Apple Support Community, MacRumors Forum and further down, there’s Reddit. I also did [kumo cloud not working setup 5ghz] recently (it’s a nightmare) and it was the Netgear community, the SmartThings Community, GreenBuildingAdvisor before Reddit. Related to that was [disable 5g airport] which has Apple Support Community above Reddit. [how to open an 8 track tape] — really, it was the YouTube videos that helped me most, but it’s the Tapeheads community that comes before Reddit.
In your example for [toyota tacoma], I don’t even get Reddit in the top results. I get Toyota, Car & Driver, Wikipedia, Toyota again, three YouTube videos from different creators (not Toyota), Edmunds, a Top Stories unit. No Reddit, which doesn’t really support the notion of always wanting to drive traffic just to Reddit.
If I guess at the more specific query you might have done, maybe [overland mods for toyota tacoma], I get a YouTube video first, then Reddit, then Tacoma World at third — not near the bottom. So yes, Reddit is higher for that query — but it’s not first. It’s also not always first. And sometimes, it’s not even showing at all.”

hankschrader79 conceded that they were generalizing when they wrote that Google always prioritized Reddit. But they also insisted that that didn’t diminish what they said is a fact that Google’s “prioritization” forum content has benefitted Reddit more than actual forums.

Why Is The Reddit Post Ranked So High?

It’s possible that Google “tested” that Reddit post in position 8 within minutes and that user interaction signals indicated to Google’s algorithms that users prefer to see that Reddit post. If that’s the case then it’s not a matter of Google showing preference to Reddit post but rather it’s users that are showing the preference and the algorithm is responding to those preferences.

Nevertheless, an argument can be made that user preferences for Reddit can be a manifestation of Familiarity Bias. Familiarity Bias is when people show a preference for things that are familiar to them. If a person is familiar with a brand because of all the advertising they were exposed to then they may show a bias for the brand products over unfamiliar brands.

Users who are familiar with Reddit may choose Reddit because they don’t know the other sites in the search results or because they have a bias that Google ranks spammy and optimized websites and feel safer reading Reddit.

Google may be picking up on those user interaction signals that indicate a preference and satisfaction with the Reddit results but those results may simply be biases and not an indication that Reddit is trustworthy and authoritative.

Is Reddit Benefiting From A Self-Reinforcing Feedback Loop?

It may very well be that Google’s decision to prioritize user generated content may have started a self-reinforcing pattern that draws users in to Reddit through the search results and because the answers seem plausible those users start to prefer Reddit results. When they’re exposed to more Reddit posts their familiarity bias kicks in and they start to show a preference for Reddit. So what could be happening is that the users and Google’s algorithm are creating a self-reinforcing feedback loop.

Is it possible that Google’s decision to show more user generated content has kicked off a cycle where more users are exposed to Reddit which then feeds back into Google’s algorithm which in turn increases Reddit visibility, regardless of lack of expertise and authoritativeness?

Featured Image by Shutterstock/Kues

SEO

WordPress Releases A Performance Plugin For “Near-Instant Load Times”

Published

1 day ago

April 14, 2024

Max

WordPress released an official plugin that adds support for a cutting edge technology called speculative loading that can help boost site performance and improve the user experience for site visitors.

Speculative Loading

Rendering means constructing the entire webpage so that it instantly displays (rendering). When your browser downloads the HTML, images, and other resources and puts it together into a webpage, that’s rendering. Prerendering is putting that webpage together (rendering it) in the background.

What this plugin does is to enable the browser to prerender the entire webpage that a user might navigate to next. The plugin does that by anticipating which webpage the user might navigate to based on where they are hovering.

Chrome lists a preference for only prerendering when there is an at least 80% probability of a user navigating to another webpage. The official Chrome support page for prerendering explains:

“Pages should only be prerendered when there is a high probability the page will be loaded by the user. This is why the Chrome address bar prerendering options only happen when there is such a high probability (greater than 80% of the time).

There is also a caveat in that same developer page that prerendering may not happen based on user settings, memory usage and other scenarios (more details below about how analytics handles prerendering).

The Speculative Loading API solves a problem that previous solutions could not because in the past they were simply prefetching resources like JavaScript and CSS but not actually prerendering the entire webpage.

The official WordPress announcement explains it like this:

Introducing the Speculation Rules API
The Speculation Rules API is a new web API that solves the above problems. It allows defining rules to dynamically prefetch and/or prerender URLs of certain structure based on user interaction, in JSON syntax—or in other words, speculatively preload those URLs before the navigation. This API can be used, for example, to prerender any links on a page whenever the user hovers over them.”

The official WordPress page about this new functionality describes it:

“The Speculation Rules API is a new web API… It allows defining rules to dynamically prefetch and/or prerender URLs of certain structure based on user interaction, in JSON syntax—or in other words, speculatively preload those URLs before the navigation.
This API can be used, for example, to prerender any links on a page whenever the user hovers over them. Also, with the Speculation Rules API, “prerender” actually means to prerender the entire page, including running JavaScript. This can lead to near-instant load times once the user clicks on the link as the page would have most likely already been loaded in its entirety. However that is only one of the possible configurations.”

The new WordPress plugin adds support for the Speculation Rules API. The Mozilla developer pages, a great resource for HTML technical understanding describes it like this:

“The Speculation Rules API is designed to improve performance for future navigations. It targets document URLs rather than specific resource files, and so makes sense for multi-page applications (MPAs) rather than single-page applications (SPAs).
The Speculation Rules API provides an alternative to the widely-available <link rel=”prefetch”> feature and is designed to supersede the Chrome-only deprecated <link rel=”prerender”> feature. It provides many improvements over these technologies, along with a more expressive, configurable syntax for specifying which documents should be prefetched or prerendered.”
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Performance Lab Plugin

The new plugin was developed by the official WordPress performance team which occasionally rolls out new plugins for users to test ahead of possible inclusion into the actual WordPress core. So it’s a good opportunity to be first to try out new performance technologies.

The new WordPress plugin is by default set to prerender “WordPress frontend URLs” which are pages, posts, and archive pages. How it works can be fine-tuned under the settings:

Settings > Reading > Speculative Loading

Browser Compatibility

The Speculative API is supported by Chrome 108 however the specific rules used by the new plugin require Chrome 121 or higher. Chrome 121 was released in early 2024.

Browsers that do not support will simply ignore the plugin and will have no effect on the user experience.

Check out the new Speculative Loading WordPress plugin developed by the official core WordPress performance team.

How Analytics Handles Prerendering

A WordPress developer commented with a question asking how Analytics would handle prerendering and someone else answered that it’s up to the Analytics provider to detect a prerender and not count it as a page load or site visit.

Fortunately both Google Analytics and Google Publisher Tags (GPT) both are able to handle prerenders. The Chrome developers support page has a note about how analytics handles prerendering:

“Google Analytics handles prerender by delaying until activation by default as of September 2023, and Google Publisher Tag (GPT) made a similar change to delay triggering advertisements until activation as of November 2023.”

Possible Conflict With Ad Blocker Extensions

There are a couple things to be aware of about this plugin, aside from the fact that it’s an experimental feature that requires Chrome 121 or higher.

A comment by a WordPress plugin developer that this feature may not work with browsers that are using the uBlock Origin ad blocking browser extension.

Download the plugin:
Speculative Loading Plugin by the WordPress Performance Team

Read the announcement at WordPress
Speculative Loading in WordPress

SEO

10 Paid Search & PPC Planning Best Practices

Published

2 days ago

April 14, 2024

Max

10 Paid Search & PPC Planning Best Practices

Whether you are new to paid media or reevaluating your efforts, it’s critical to review your performance and best practices for your overall PPC marketing program, accounts, and campaigns.

Revisiting your paid media plan is an opportunity to ensure your strategy aligns with your current goals.

Reviewing best practices for pay-per-click is also a great way to keep up with trends and improve performance with newly released ad technologies.

As you review, you’ll find new strategies and features to incorporate into your paid search program, too.

Here are 10 PPC best practices to help you adjust and plan for the months ahead.

1. Goals

When planning, it is best practice to define goals for the overall marketing program, ad platforms, and at the campaign level.

Defining primary and secondary goals guides the entire PPC program. For example, your primary conversion may be to generate leads from your ads.

You’ll also want to look at secondary goals, such as brand awareness that is higher in the sales funnel and can drive interest to ultimately get the sales lead-in.

2. Budget Review & Optimization

Some advertisers get stuck in a rut and forget to review and reevaluate the distribution of their paid media budgets.

To best utilize budgets, consider the following:

Reconcile your planned vs. spend for each account or campaign on a regular basis. Depending on the budget size, monthly, quarterly, or semiannually will work as long as you can hit budget numbers.
Determine if there are any campaigns that should be eliminated at this time to free up the budget for other campaigns.
Is there additional traffic available to capture and grow results for successful campaigns? The ad platforms often include a tool that will provide an estimated daily budget with clicks and costs. This is just an estimate to show more click potential if you are interested.
If other paid media channels perform mediocrely, does it make sense to shift those budgets to another?
For the overall paid search and paid social budget, can your company invest more in the positive campaign results?

3. Consider New Ad Platforms

If you can shift or increase your budgets, why not test out a new ad platform? Knowing your audience and where they spend time online will help inform your decision when choosing ad platforms.

Go beyond your comfort zone in Google, Microsoft, and Meta Ads.

Here are a few other advertising platforms to consider testing:

LinkedIn: Most appropriate for professional and business targeting. LinkedIn audiences can also be reached through Microsoft Ads.
TikTok: Younger Gen Z audience (16 to 24), video.
Pinterest: Products, services, and consumer goods with a female-focused target.
Snapchat: Younger demographic (13 to 35), video ads, app installs, filters, lenses.

Need more detailed information and even more ideas? Read more about the 5 Best Google Ads Alternatives.

4. Top Topics in Google Ads & Microsoft Ads

Recently, trends in search and social ad platforms have presented opportunities to connect with prospects more precisely, creatively, and effectively.

Don’t overlook newer targeting and campaign types you may not have tried yet.

Video: Incorporating video into your PPC accounts takes some planning for the goals, ad creative, targeting, and ad types. There is a lot of opportunity here as you can simply include video in responsive display ads or get in-depth in YouTube targeting.
Performance Max: This automated campaign type serves across all of Google’s ad inventory. Microsoft Ads recently released PMAX so you can plan for consistency in campaign types across platforms. Do you want to allocate budget to PMax campaigns? Learn more about how PMax compares to search.
Automation: While AI can’t replace human strategy and creativity, it can help manage your campaigns more easily. During planning, identify which elements you want to automate, such as automatically created assets and/or how to successfully guide the AI in the Performance Max campaigns.

While exploring new features, check out some hidden PPC features you probably don’t know about.

5. Revisit Keywords

The role of keywords has evolved over the past several years with match types being less precise and loosening up to consider searcher intent.

For example, [exact match] keywords previously would literally match with the exact keyword search query. Now, ads can be triggered by search queries with the same meaning or intent.

A great planning exercise is to lay out keyword groups and evaluate if they are still accurately representing your brand and product/service.

Review search term queries triggering ads to discover trends and behavior you may not have considered. It’s possible this has impacted performance and conversions over time.

Critical to your strategy:

Review the current keyword rules and determine if this may impact your account in terms of close variants or shifts in traffic volume.
Brush up on how keywords work in each platform because the differences really matter!
Review search term reports more frequently for irrelevant keywords that may pop up from match type changes. Incorporate these into match type changes or negative keywords lists as appropriate.

6. Revisit Your Audiences

Review the audiences you selected in the past, especially given so many campaign types that are intent-driven.

Automated features that expand your audience could be helpful, but keep an eye out for performance metrics and behavior on-site post-click.

Remember, an audience is simply a list of users who are grouped together by interests or behavior online.

Therefore, there are unlimited ways to mix and match those audiences and target per the sales funnel.

Here are a few opportunities to explore and test:

LinkedIn user targeting: Besides LinkedIn, this can be found exclusively in Microsoft Ads.
Detailed Demographics: Marital status, parental status, home ownership, education, household income.
In-market and custom intent: Searches and online behavior signaling buying cues.
Remarketing: Advertisers website visitors, interactions with ads, and video/ YouTube.

Note: This varies per the campaign type and seems to be updated frequently, so make this a regular check-point in your campaign management for all platforms.

7. Organize Data Sources

You will likely be running campaigns on different platforms with combinations of search, display, video, etc.

Looking back at your goals, what is the important data, and which platforms will you use to review and report? Can you get the majority of data in one analytics platform to compare and share?

Millions of companies use Google Analytics, which is a good option for centralized viewing of advertising performance, website behavior, and conversions.

8. Reevaluate How You Report

Have you been using the same performance report for years?

It’s time to reevaluate your essential PPC key metrics and replace or add that data to your reports.

There are two great resources to kick off this exercise:

Your objectives in reevaluating the reporting are:

Are we still using this data? Is it still relevant?
Is the data we are viewing actionable?
What new metrics should we consider adding we haven’t thought about?
How often do we need to see this data?
Do the stakeholders receiving the report understand what they are looking at (aka data visualization)?

Adding new data should be purposeful, actionable, and helpful in making decisions for the marketing plan. It’s also helpful to decide what type of data is good to see as “deep dives” as needed.

9. Consider Using Scripts

The current ad platforms have plenty of AI recommendations and automated rules, and there is no shortage of third-party tools that can help with optimizations.

Scripts is another method for advertisers with large accounts or some scripting skills to automate report generation and repetitive tasks in their Google Ads accounts.

Navigating the world of scripts can seem overwhelming, but a good place to start is a post here on Search Engine Journal that provides use cases and resources to get started with scripts.

Luckily, you don’t need a Ph.D. in computer science — there are plenty of resources online with free or templated scripts.

10. Seek Collaboration

Another effective planning tactic is to seek out friendly resources and second opinions.

Much of the skill and science of PPC management is unique to the individual or agency, so there is no shortage of ideas to share between you.

You can visit the Paid Search Association, a resource for paid ad managers worldwide, to make new connections and find industry events.

Preparing For Paid Media Success

Strategies should be based on clear and measurable business goals. Then, you can evaluate the current status of your campaigns based on those new targets.

Your paid media strategy should also be built with an eye for both past performance and future opportunities. Look backward and reevaluate your existing assumptions and systems while investigating new platforms, topics, audiences, and technologies.

Also, stay current with trends and keep learning. Check out ebooks, social media experts, and industry publications for resources and motivational tips.

More resources:

Featured Image: Vanatchanan/Shutterstock