The Difference Between SEO VS PPC

When first embarking on a Search Engine Marketing (SEM) campaign, you may be confused about the difference between SEO and PPC and where you should allocate your marketing budget. Over 85% of Internet users will go to their favourite Search Engine first when looking for products or services, but 95% don’t look past the first three search results pages, so SEM should play an important part of your overall SEO marketing strategy.

What Are SEO and PPC Exactly?

With an SEM campaign, Search Engine results pages are divided into two main parts: organic SEO results and PPC advertising. Research shows that around 70% of Internet users click on SEO (natural or organic search) results and only 30% of users click on PPC (paid search results).

SEO or Search Engine Optimisation: This is the process or art of making a website achieve high rankings on Search Engine results pages (SERPS) for given keywords.

PPC or Pay Per Click: This is where an advertiser bids on keywords associated with an advertisement in order to achieve higher position on Search Engine results pages (sponsored links section) for searches on that keyword. Other options for advertising include Google’s display network (banner ads), remarketing (which serves ads to users who have previously visited your site), shopping ads (which appear as product listings next to a search result), and map ads (ads for physical locations delivered in the Google Maps tab).

What Are the Key Differences Between SEO and PPC in an SEM Campaign?

Position: SEO focuses on natural or organic search results which are displayed in the main body of the SERP. PPC listings are displayed as the ‘sponsored links’ on the top and bottom of the page (in addition to the other types of ads previously mentioned). Organic search results include all web pages which the search engine determines to be relevant to the query, while PPC reflects a targeted SEM campaign and may show results only in a specific geographic area, to certain audience demographics, or be time specific.

Promotion results: With an organic SEO campaign, a new website or Web page may take up to three months to show up on Search Engines as Google takes time to index and rank a site. However, SEO results in continuous traffic over a longer period of time. PPC can give an initial boost in traffic and is useful when launching a brand new website which is not yet appearing in organic results. However, when a PPC campaign is stopped and the budget is removed, any paid traffic stops immediately.

Perception: Organic ranking positions that happen as a result of an SEM campaign are seen to be unbiased and have a higher level of credibility. SEO rankings are unpaid and based on the relevance of the page to the keyword, but with PPC, the more you bid on a given keyword, the better your position in the search results. For both organic and PPC SERPs, a higher position is more trusted by searchers and will get more clicks.

Price: With an SEO and/or a PPC campaign, there may be an initial set-up and ongoing fee if you engage an SEO company or PPC specialist to create a campaign for your business. With an SEO campaign, there is no cost per individual click or visitor, only the costs incurred during the efforts of your in-house team or SEO vendor. However, with a PPC campaign, there is an ongoing cost per click or visitor – the greater your budget, the more traffic your website will receive.

Professional advice: Ideally as part of an SEM campaign, both SEO and PPC require an SEO expert or PPC specialist to manage the campaign and make sure that you have selected the best keywords within budget and your marketing campaign delivers the desired results. You can manage the campaigns yourself, but you cannot be assured that you will get the desired results.

Whether you choose to invest in an SEO or PPC program will ultimately depend on your marketing strategy. When launching a new website, you may need to see fast results and use a short term call to action PPC campaign but over the long term, an SEO strategy will return more money on your SEM investment. Contact us to find out more about SEO and what strategy will best fit your SEM campaign objectives.

Online Reputation Management and SEO

When everything is going well for a business, reputation management is usually never given much thought. But when a company suddenly slips up somehow, negative publicity can take off like a rocket. Then, everyone will be scrambling for help.

As the SEO pro, you’re likely to get a call. You might not even be an expert in crisis control. After all, it’s a relatively specialized area of internet marketing. But don’t worry. The normal SEO techniques you use every day can help you respond to a PR crisis. Here’s a quick rundown on what to do:

Step One: Identify the Crisis

Trust us, you’ll know a crisis when you see on – especially online where controversy spreads like wildfire. The key here is to identify the source of the crisis as quick as possible. Time is not on your side, so you need to move fast.

You want to identify the first place online where the controversy started. This is probably going to be a social media platform, but it could also be blogs or other pages on your website.

Step Two: Initial Response

Once you find where all the trouble started, you’ll need to respond there first.

If possible, try to apologize or otherwise correct the situation as best you can. Depending on your skillset and relationship with the business, you might simply be posting content they give you or you might be tasked with creating content on their behalf.

Last year, DiGiorno’s Pizza accidentally made a joke using a hashtag related to domestic violence. Their apologetic response came pretty quickly. Even better, they personally apologized to everyone who tweeted a complaint.

Step Three: Create a List of Keywords

You need to figure out what keywords are most closely associated with your negative mentions. Is it the company name alone? The company name and a few other phrases? Something else?

For instance, Amy’s Baking Company is an Arizona restaurant which exploded (metaphorically) in bad press after an appearance on the TV show Kitchen Nightmares. While the keyword phrase “Amy’s Baking Company” was important, much of the content written about the incident also includes the phrase “Kitchen Nightmares.” So that’s a keyword phrase you’d also want to make a note of if you were in charge of reputation management in this situation.

(Note: The real reputation management in the Amy’s Baking Company situation was handled so poorly it’s a case study in what not to do. But that’s another issue entirely.)

Step Four: Identify Any Negative URL’s        

You want to identify any URL’s dedicated to tarnishing the company. These can be specific blog posts or even entire websites. These won’t exist in every situation. If a slight misstep has been made on social media, you probably won’t find an entire website dedicated to it. But, still, it’s always a good idea to check.

Step Five: Optimize Your Social Media Profiles

A company can’t run away from what happened. Let’s take another look at DiGiorno’s. When they responded individually to each Twitter complaint, they weren’t just being nice (although it did seem like a legitimate mistake). They were also helping take control of their bad press.

Every one of their apologetic response contained hashtags associated with their bad press (#boycottdigiorno and so forth). If anyone searched by any of these negative hashtags, they’d see complaints. But they’d also see genuine apologies from DiGiorno’s, too.

Another way to do this is to insert keywords into an apology posted on Facebook and/or your webpage. This can be included as part of a long-form article explaining the situation. Again, this may or may not be content you, as an internet marketer, will actually create.

Step Six: Register Second-Tier Social Profiles

Think of your brand as a pond. Negative complaints are like stones being thrown into the pond. When there are a lot of complaints, the waters become choppy and filled with waves.

Expanding the size of the pond helps reduce the severity of the waves. To do this, you’ll want to register as many second-tier social profiles as possible. Some of these second-tier profiles even have high domain authority. This helps to eventually lower the negative press from the SERP.

Step Seven: Guest Blogging

You want to get your name out there in a positive way. Guest blogging is an effective method of doing so. You can blog about neutral topics related to your industry.

You can also blog about your recent experiences with negative PR. A topic such as “What We Learned During Our Recent Controversy” might be appealing to marketing and PR professionals.  Plus, this topic lets your use those negative keywords in an overall positive way.

Step Eight: Go to Step One

Well, not really. But cleaning up a damaged reputation won’t happen overnight. You’ll need to regularly monitor the web for more negative attention and negative keywords. You’ll also want to continue to create positive content associated with your brand. This, along with time, will help push the negative info further and further down.

Keeping Your Reputation Clean

Of course, not having a PR problem in the first place is always the best course of action. There will always be a few complaints here and there. This is the internet, after all. But you want to do all you can to prevent future blunders originating from the company itself.

Obviously, this part is all more for the business owner than the SEO pro. But you might be in a position to help advise a company. Here’s what to tell them:

·         Claim your company name on every possible social media name. This prevents someone else from taking over.

·         Create multimedia content with a positive brand message. Search engines give a high ranking to YouTube and Google images.

·         Be careful what you post. Social media mishaps are one of the most common sources of bad PR. Make sure the person in charge of your social media platforms is an experienced professional.

Online Reputation Management and You

You might spend 99% of your time doing traditional internet marketing. But you still need to be prepared for the rare time when a client contacts you in a panic. By following the tips above you can help mitigate and repair the damage. Even though a PR blunder isn’t ideal, it can be managed with the right moves. 

SEO Around the World: Creating International Websites

If you’ve ever watched Last Week Tonight with John Oliver you probably know about his reoccurring bit where he mislabels a foreign country only to point out how nobody has noticed the error. For me, this is one of those “it’s funny because it’s true” type of situations. I’m terrible when it comes to foreign geography.

This wasn’t much of a problem professionally until I was hired by a client who wanted a website targeted to Germany. Sure, I’ve heard of Germany. But I didn’t know how to market towards the average German.

Should the content be in German? Or is English okay? How is a site in Germany different from one in America? I had no clue.

Over the years, I’ve taken on more and more international clients. This was never part of my business plan, but once I successfully completed the German site more international orders started coming in. Even though international sites seemed complicated at first, I ended up learning the right way to approach them – no matter how little I knew about the foreign country involved. 

Here are some tips and tricks I’ve learned about internet marketing and international websites:

Determine the Type of Targeting

The business must decide what type of targeting they want. There are two major types: country and language. There are specific reasons to use each.

Country:

This is the ideal localization. This does require enough potential users and search volume to justify. Typically, this happens with large companies who already have an established customer base.

Language:

When Country isn’t the best choice, you should go with language. This doesn’t mean Language is the second choice. Rather, Language is often the best choice for a business in certain situations:

1) When location doesn’t have a high importance. This could be a virtual business where you’re not providing a physical product or service. Some examples would be a technology, business or content creation company.

Two large examples of businesses which use language targeting are Skype and Atlassian.

2) When your potential customer base is of an uncertain size. If you start with language localization you can then watch growth trends for an area. Once certain levels of traffic and conversion are reached, you can then move into country localization with greater confidence.

Measure Your Performance in Relevant Markets

Your web structure could change based on a variety of factors including authority level, traffic and current rankings. If your client has an existing web presence in the country (or a similar country) this is a great place to start analyzing. Try to determine the following:

·         The current web structure

·         The current search visibility, traffic and conversion rate

·         The overall success of the existing site

Analyze the Popularity of the Top Sites in Your Targeted Market

Find your competition in the market and take a look at what they’re doing. First, you’ll want to identify and analyze their web structure. Then you’ll want to take a look at their link profiles.

Their overall popularity at a domain and page level is important to know. So is the percentage of links which come from local sites. To do this, compare local ccTLDs and IPs to gTLDs.

Determine the Influence of Local vs. Generic Domains

If you’re not starting from scratch, you’ll hopefully have access to search visibility and traffic data. You can use this data to analyze cultural factors and preferences of your international audience. This data alone is simply a starting point, so take it with a grain of proverbial salt.

An international site’s performance will also be affected by:

·         The visibility and authority of your brand locally

·         The frequency of mobile verses desktop search

·         The number of ads for the brand

·         The general organization of SERPS for the niche

Communication with an International Client

I found this tricky at first. My contact for the business spoke perfect English, but he’d never been to America. This definitely presented some challenges.

Turns out, normal shorthand for design and structure are a bit dependent on a common culture. I found an effective way around this, however. I had my client pick two types of samples. I asked them to find:

·         Examples of websites which sold a similar product or service. These are websites where my client liked how their competitors did business. These were functionality samples.

·         Examples of websites which we’re aesthetically pleasing. The products or services sold on these sites were irrelevant. These were design samples.

This helped me get a pretty good idea of what my client wanted. As with any client, there was a bit of back and forth until we settled on an overall look. But the initial examples provided a great common ground to start from.

Keywords in a Foreign Language

I’m not going to lie. Analyzing and selecting keyword phrases in a foreign language can be a bit rough. Now, no company is going to hire a non-native speaker to write their content. But you might be called upon to create a few keyword phrases.

You can still use the same process you’d normally use to find keywords. Google translate can give you an idea of what those words mean, too. This is about the best you can do. Your client should hopefully help you from there, acting as a liaison between you and the content creator.

Around the World

The internet has made the world smaller. International business is easier than ever before. Even if you’re not an expert in foreign countries (and I’m certainly not claiming to be one, either) you can still provide your internet marketing services to companies around the world.

Sure, there might some language and cultural hiccups now and again. But for the most part SEO skills are universal. With these tips and tricks, you can expand your base of potential customers by leaps and bounds. 

Simple is Better: How to Talk to Your Clients about SEO

As a professional internet marketer, you already know all about the benefits of SEO. In fact, the idea of creating a website without implementing SEO techniques probably seems ridiculous. But outside the internet marketing realm, the benefits of SEO are not always so well understood. 

If a client simply “wants a website” they may need a little convincing to purchase your SEO expertise. On one hand, you don’t want to be in a position where it simply seems like you’re trying to push services on your client. On the other hand, a client is rarely going to be happy with the results they’ll get from a website which hasn’t been optimized for search engines.

Here are a few tips and tricks to help your clients understand the benefits of Search Engine Optimization:

Don’t Be Overly Technical

“First, I’m going to create natural backlinks. Then I’ll insert keywords with a localized approach. Finally, I’m going to devote about 50% of my time to your mobile presence.”

Sure, this isn’t overly complicated to an SEO pro, but for a client unfamiliar with this world the above sounds like a bunch of buzzwords. So you want to use clear, plain explanations. Don’t focus so much on what you’re going to do. Focus on the benefits which the client will experience directly.

This boils down to three reasons to implement SEO. These are concepts any client can appreciate:

Reason #1: SEO is Customer Friendly

In order to explain the importance of SEO to a client, you’ll want to bring up your favorite analytics tool. Show your client where their traffic, conversions and sales originate. For the most part, organic searches are going to drive most of this.

Without SEO, your client’s organic results are basically, well, subject to the fates. SEO gives your client’s site more control over their SERP. (Of course, you’ll want to explain this without using all the acronyms.)

With SEO, your client’s SERP will raise. This means more potential customers will find your client when they search for terms related to the product or service they provide. This increased exposure usually leads to more sales.

Here’s a simple way to explain this to your clients:

Without SEO, your business will still show up in the search results. But you really have no say as to where in those search results your business will appear. It’s not likely to be in a top spot, however, simply because your competitors are already using SEO to take those top spots. Without SEO, your business will stagnate.

With SEO, your ranking in the search results is more controllable. Even better, SEO techniques can continually improve your ranking over time. More and more customers will be drawn to your site when they search for terms related to your business. With SEO, your business will grow.

Reason #2: SEO is Cost Effective

I’ve had my fair share of clients who believe the most effective way to find success online is to simply spend money. I’ve also had plenty of clients who had a limited budget. Fortunately, SEO works well in both situations.

If your client insists on buying something, you can direct them to pay-per-click strategies, banner ads and the like. But you’ll also want to tell them that some of their best results will come from simple, free SEO solutions. Obviously, they’ll still have to pay you, the SEO pro, to implement these strategies – but that’s still cheaper than paying you to implement paid strategies.

SEO allows you to attract high quality traffic. SEO can even level the playing field between large and small companies. Smart SEO strategies can push a small business to the top of the search results page.

How do companies use SEO so effectively? They approach the concept from the very start of development. SEO strategies are integrated into every aspect of their online presence. This includes content marketing, social marketing and any other aspect of their brand.

This approach doesn’t care how much money you spend. The strategies alone make the difference. This makes SEO not only the most cost effective technique but also simply the most effective all-around.  

Reason #3: SEO is Long-Lasting

The advertising and marketing budget of a business can change quickly. If the company is reliant on paid ads, their entire strategy can be in trouble if the budget shrinks. This isn’t the case with SEO.

SEO never stops working. In fact, many SEO practices become more effective the longer they exist. Each year, you can add more to your SEO strategies – more keywords, more guest blogs and so on. Eventually, your client can own their niche and dominate their market.

Paid strategies can stop and start depending on your client’s needs and budget. As long as you have effective SEO strategies in place, potential customers will still be driven to your client’s site. This lets you implement paid strategies only at key times, such as during specific holidays.

Your Clients Want SEO…

…even if they don’t know it yet. Convincing them can sometimes be difficult. After all, SEO isn’t a physical thing you can see the way you can see a banner ad. Sometimes I’ve had clients who didn’t understand how important just a few keywords can be.

But most businesses respond to the bottom line. When you use these three strategies above, you’ll be able to explain to your clients how SEO can increase their profits in the long run. In fact, SEO is one of the most cost effective ways a business can grow online.

You might also explain how creating a website without SEO is basically a complete waste of time. A website people can’t find isn’t really a website at all. So even though convincing a client they need SEO isn’t always the most fun activity, it is a necessity. Hopefully the above strategies will lead to smooth communication and a long-term relationship with a great (and now knowledgeable) client.        

The Truth is Out There: 4 Google Conspiracy Theories Explained

As an SEO pro, you probably already know that search engines can sometimes behave… in mysterious ways. Part of our job as internet marketers is pretty straight-forward: researching keywords, publishing content and creating natural backlinks.

Another part of our job is a little more theoretical. We need to predict where organic search trends are heading. The better we can predict the unknown, the more effective we’ll be at spotting both opportunities and potential problems within a client’s campaign.

Google’s algorithms are notoriously secretive. We basically have to use inductive reasoning to figure out what will help site rankings, revenue and traffic. Dealing with so many unknowns seems to have made more than a few SEO experts a bit, shall we say, conspiracy-minded.

Today we’re going to take a look at some of the more far-fetched theories. Are they totally crazy, or is there something to them after all?

Conspiracy Theory #1: Google Wants to Decide What’s True

We’ll start with one of the more popular “world domination” related theories. Google wants to decide what a true fact is and isn’t. This means accuracy is used as a ranking factor, with Google determining what’s accurate about any given subject.

This theory can be traced to back a Washington Post article titled, “The Huge Implications of Google’s Idea to Rank Sites Based on Their Accuracy.” Basically, Google published a paper discussing a plan to identify the overall level of factual accurateness of a web site. Site with more factual information would rank higher than sites deemed less accurate.

Google doesn’t deny this. But the plan isn’t really what it seems. “This was research,” Google told the Post. “We don’t have any specific plans to implement it in our products. We publish hundreds of research papers every year.”

The problems are very theoretical but, admittedly, pretty scary. An example would be: What if Google Decided the Earth was flat? Every top search result related to the Earth would promote this Flat Earth theory.

While that example is a bit over-the-top, we understand why people aren’t thrilled with this idea. But the good news is this is a completely speculative idea at this point. It’ll be a long time, if ever, before Google will be able to implement such a plan into action.

We Say: Not a conspiracy yet, but could maybe possibly be one in the future.

Conspiracy Theory #2: Organic Rankings are being De-Prioritized

The origin of this theory is pretty obvious. Google doesn’t profit from organic results. They do profit from selling AdWords, however. If they deprioritize organic results, more and more companies will choose paid listings.

We hate to say it, but there might actually be something to this. The more we talk to other SEO pros, the more we find people who say they’ve never (or rarely) seen an organic listing “above the fold” in mobile listings. With desktop results, we also can’t help but notice how local listings are usually prominent in the top screen view of search results.

To be clear, we’re not suggesting this is an intentional ploy by Google to de-prioritize organic results. After all, all the evidence we have is anecdotal. That’s hardly enough to justify the label of “conspiracy theory.”

The best way to work with this theory is compare your organic results to the paid results of your competitors. If you’re getting buried beneath paid listings, you might want to either buy some listings yourself or find new keywords to insert into your content.

We Say: Probably not an evil conspiracy, but definitely something to pay attention to.

Conspiracy Theory #3: Buying AdWords Improves Your Organic Rankings

This one is an oldie but a goodie. Does Google reward sites who purchase AdWords with an increase in that site’s organic search result ranking?

Google says no way. “Investment in paid search has no impact on your organic search ranking.”

What do we think? There’s simply no evidence that buying AdWords will boost your organic search results rankings. Google isn’t favoring customers who purchase AdWords in any artificial way.

Even if they did, why would they keep it a secret? Acknowledging that organic search results can be directly improved simply purchasing AdWords would probably cause sales of AdWords to go through the virtual roof.

But like any good conspiracy theory, there is some truth behind the idea. Mainly, AdWords does lead to some organic benefits. These benefits are:

·         Users are more likely to spend money when you have both organic and paid listings. These two listings together expose your brand to the widest possible audience.

·         Paid ads lead to more searches for your brand later on. If people don’t pay much attention to your ad at the time, they’re still likely to remember your brand later.

·         Paid ads can increase your incoming links. This, in turn, will improve your organic search results.

We Say: Not an organized conspiracy, but paid listings should be considered for any SEO campaign.

Conspiracy Theory #4: The U.S. Government has a Backdoor into Google

We can’t really discuss conspiracy theories unless we throw in one which involves the government. The theory here is that the CIA, FBI and other agencies has immediate and unrestricted access to Google through a backdoor.

With Edward Snowden and the revelations of the PRISM surveillance program, this idea is far more plausible than it would’ve been just five years ago. But is there an actual backdoor into Google?

They say – very clearly – no, there isn’t. They published a response which read, in part, “The U.S. government does not have direct access or a ‘back door’ to the information stored in our data centers.”

That’s likely all there is to the issue of a backdoor. But this doesn’t meaning using Google makes you anonymous. Everything you do on Google has the potential to be acquired by the government through a request.

We Say: Unfounded conspiracy, but don’t think your internet activity is completely free from government access.

Conclusion

Most of these “conspiracies” have an element of truth. But that truth usually has a pretty innocent explanation. So, you can probably keep your tin-foil hat on the shelf for now. The good news is that all of these theories are pretty creative. The best way to learn more about how Google operates is to formulate a theory and then test it out. So keep those conspiracy theories coming – even the craziest ideas might have some worthwhile information.  

Tricks and Treats: 3 Important Google Updates for the Holiday Season

Halloween is right around the corner. This begs the question: Have you seen any Christmas decorations up yet? They seem to go up earlier each year. 

Halloween is the start of three very busy months for retailers. This year, eRetailers (or you, the SEO pro who manages their sites) need to be aware of some changes. Specifically, Google recently made several changes to their:

·         Shopping Campaigns

·         Product Listing Ads (PLA)

If your client uses Google Shopping, here’s what you need to know:

Shopping Assortment Report

In early October, Google released a report entitled “Shopping Assortment Report in Merchant Center gives retailers insight into demand for popular products they don’t stock.” As the title implies, this is a great way for merchants to discover any popular retailers which they don’t stock – but probably should.

The Shopping Assortment Report lets merchants access a database of the top 100 items consumers are buying. You can easily filter this report by category. This allows you find the products which apply to your business (or, more accurately, your client’s business – but you get the idea).

The report provides more than just a list of products. You can also use the SAR to:

·         Track product price points

·         Track holiday activity with a look-back window of up to 14 days

This is a useful tool for more than just retailers. The SAR gives you a list of popular products. You can use these products as keyword phrases to hopefully catch of their search traffic.

For instance, if you own a home decorating business, you can recommend some of the more popular furniture items on the list. Not only will this help with any affiliate marketing, it’ll also draw traffic from people who have already bought the item and want help. The idea of creating a “user guide” for any popular products related to your industry will work for just about any site.

Promotional Text is No Longer in the Land of the Living

Just in time for Halloween, Promotional Text is now dead. Promotional Text is the line of text found in Product Listing Ads. While this text was optional, many retailers used it to announce of a variety of info including

·         Sale prices

·         Free shipping

·         Temporary deals

Promotional text was removed at the end of September. The replacement? An automated extension which is pulled from both the Merchant Center and the feed.

There’s not much to do about this change expect be aware of it. It’s not necessarily bad news. Now, retailers will have less manual customization. You also want to make sure you optimize your feed with appropriate content, since this is where a lot of the text is now drawn from.

If you want to further customize the shopping experience, additional extensions can be used for the following callouts:

·         Merchant promotions (discounts, etc.)

·         Product ratings

·         Ratings (positive ones you want to highlight)

·         Store certifications

So, even though promotional text is dead, there are still viable alternatives which let you communicate with your customers in essentially the same way as before.

Local Inventory and Mobile

As always during the holiday season, brick-and-mortar stores have to embrace the online habits of customers or risk becoming irrelevant. Fortunately, many of these changes help the offline retailer.

Shoppers who search online will now find local inventory ads. These ads highlight both store and product details including:

·         Item availability

·         Item price (including sales)

·         Information on the specific store (hours, location, etc.)

Google is now prioritizing local inventory ads. This means when customers search, they’ll find results tailored even more to their location. For retailers, local search engine optimization is more important than ever before.

Local search options for the desktop user can sometimes feel a little sparse, especially compared to the options for a mobile user (since the mobile user is more likely to be close to the store). This change attempts to fix that by giving retailers the option to display “store only” products.

A product only available in the store is often a great incentive for a customer to make an in-person shopping trip. “Store only” disclaimers are especially useful during the holiday whenever:

·         Online stock runs out

·         Shipping dates pass

·         A shopper needs to buy an extremely last-minute gift

Mobile shoppers will also see some changes this year.

A new enhancement to ads now allows users to swipe and reveal an extended product view, more detailed product specs, overall availability and additional information. No matter if the user purchases the product online or in-person, this expanded product view gives the user a lot of new info.

Embrace the New

Changes to Google’s Shopping Campaigns can be frustrating. After all, it does mean more work for you – and there’s not a ton of time before the shopping season really ramps up. But, overall, the experience has been enhanced for the user.

Anything which makes shopping easier for the consumer is going to be good news for retailers. But your site must be ready and accommodating for the influx of traffic. This includes making sure your site:

·         uses appropriate keywords for the products sold

·         has a clean, intuitive navigation

·         has accurate contact information and maps (generally for brick-and-mortar locations)

As with any other type of advertisement, the Product Listing Ads are not a “one and done” operation. You’ve got to constantly monitor the behavior of both customers and your competition. Optimizing your programs across Google Shopping will help you stay one step ahead.

The Timeline

This year, Black Friday falls on Friday, November 27th. This starts what is typically the busiest shopping weekend of the year. If your client is a brick-and-mortar store, you want to make sure their online presence provides everything potential customers will need, even if the deals are only available in-store.

Cyber Monday follows on November 30th. This is the online equivalent of Black Friday, where shoppers can usually find great online deals. These can be deals at stores which exist only online (like Amazon) or stores which have both an online and brick-and-mortar presence (like Target).

The holiday season can be chaotic and confusing. But with proper preparation – and knowledge of the new Google Shopping changes – you and your clients should be able to deliver. So don’t be scared of the holiday season. This year might just be the merriest one ever!