Here’s a beginner-friendly guide to help you set up, manage, and optimise your feed for success.

What is a Shopping Feed?

At its core, a Microsoft Shopping Feed is a structured spreadsheet, containing all the necessary details about your products such as titles, descriptions, prices, and availability. 

Microsoft Advertising uses this information to match your products with what people are searching for online. If your feed is incomplete or incorrect, your products might not show up in searches, which means you could miss out on potential sales.

How It Works

Whenever someone searches for a product, Microsoft scans its catalog (which includes your feed) to find the best matches. If your feed is well set up, your product will show up when it’s relevant. But if it’s not, other retailers with well-optimised feeds are ready to take your spot, potentially leaving your product out of relevant searches

Adding optional information (known as attributes or fields), like special promotions or product conditions (such as ‘new’ or ‘used’), gives you more control over how your products are shown. These fields provide Microsoft with additional information, enabling the system to more accurately match your ad to relevant searches, while keeping the format and appearance unchanged.

Top Product Feed Tips

Here are some key attributes that can enhance your Microsoft Shopping Feed:

• Promotion ID: Highlight specific deals or discounts in your ads, which can help attract price-sensitive shoppers.
• Condition: Tell customers if your product is new, used, or refurbished, so they know exactly what they’re getting.
• Shipping: Adding “Free Shipping” can be a powerful incentive for shoppers and boost your click-through rate.
• Sale Price: Showing a reduced price alongside the original price can help capture attention and increase conversions.
• Custom Labels: Tag and segment products for targeted campaigns, like promoting seasonal stock or bestsellers.

By paying attention to these recommended fields, you can enhance your Shopping Feed and, ultimately, your Shopping Ads’ performance. Not only will your products be positioned more prominently among other shopping ads, but they’ll also appear with rich product information that helps customers to make purchase decisions.

Unique Identifier Warnings

In certain countries (like the US, UK, or Australia), you’ll need to provide unique identifiers (like barcodes) for your products. These help Microsoft accurately identify your products. If you don’t include them, your products might get flagged, or worse, your ads might not run at all. 

Creating Your Shopping Feed

Building your Shopping Feed might sound tricky, but it’s not as hard as you might think. Most online stores or ecommerce platforms already have tools that can create a feed for you. If you’re starting from scratch, a simple spreadsheet will work to organise your product data.

Here are steps to build a product feed:

1. Use your Google feed: If you have an existing Google Shopping feed, you can repurpose it for Microsoft Merchant Center. Although there are some differences between the platforms, adapting your Google feed is often more efficient than creating a new one from the ground up. 
2. Fill in required fields: Add product titles, descriptions, prices, and availability. Double-check that all required fields are completed and formatted accurately.
3. Add optional fields: Enhance your feed by including additional information like promotions, condition, and custom labels.
4. Test your feed: Before uploading, run a test to ensure there are no errors or missing fields. Microsoft Merchant Center offers tools to help validate your feed.

Setting Up Your Microsoft Shopping Feed

Now that you have your feed ready, you’ll need to upload it to Microsoft Merchant Center. Here’s a simple step-by-step guide:

1. Create a merchant center: Go to the Microsoft Merchant Center and sign up using your Microsoft Advertising account.
2. Upload your feed: You can manually upload a CSV or XML file, or if you use an ecommerce platform like Shopify, connect it directly.
3. Map the fields: Microsoft will ask you to map the product attributes (fields) in your feed to its predefined fields. 
4. Submit for review: Microsoft will check your feed and approve it if everything looks good.

Once your feed is approved, your products will start appearing in relevant Shopping ads across Microsoft’s network.

Optimising Your Feed for Better Performance 

Now that your feed is live, it’s essential to optimise it for conversions. Make sure key details are at the forefront of your product titles and descriptions to reach customers who are closer to purchase.

Key Optimisation Tips:

1. Perfect your product titles: The product title is the first thing shoppers see, so make it specific and keyword-rich. Instead of “Red Dress,” opt for “Women’s Long Sleeve Red Cocktail Dress,” including details like colour, gender, occasion, and style.
2. Improve your Descriptions: Ensure product descriptions are clear and relevant, prioritising key details at the start for improved visibility. For instance, if someone searches for “purple spotty umbrella,” present that information upfront. Avoid burying important details like colour, pattern, or style in the middle of a list, and refrain from unnecessary promotional text, using all capital letters, or gimmicky foreign characters.
3. Use High-Quality Images: Use clear, high-resolution product images with clutter-free backgrounds for the best results. 
4. Avoid Duplicates: Ensure titles and prices are unique for each product variant to avoid only one version being shown. For example, list different colours or sizes distinctly, using the Item Group ID for variant groups.
5. Add Custom Labels: These allow you to group products into segments for better bidding strategies. For instance, use labels like “seasonal” or “best_sellers” to control how you target these categories.

Troubleshooting Common Shopping Feed Issues

Shopping feeds are essential for optimal ad performance, but various issues can arise that affect product visibility and campaign success. 

1. Products Not Approved: If your products aren’t showing up, Microsoft Merchant Center will tell you why. It might be a pricing error or missing details. Just make the necessary changes and resubmit.
2. Expired Feeds: Microsoft requires your feed to be updated at least every 30 days; otherwise, it expires, and your ads will stop showing. Schedule weekly uploads to Microsoft Merchant Center to ensure your feed remains current.
3. Feed Disapprovals: If Microsoft disapproves your feed, it’s usually due to missing fields or low-quality images. Check the Merchant Center for details, fix the issue, and re-submit.
4. Poor Feed Quality: Missing or inaccurate data (like GTINs or low-quality images) can hurt your ad rankings. Make sure your feed is complete and well-optimised to get the best results.

Final Thoughts: Keep Your Feed Updated

Shopping Ads are a great way to promote your products to customers who are actively shopping online. By making the most of the optional attributes within your feed, you can highlight key traits of your products that help to turn browsers into buyers. Stay on top of search terms reports and tweak your feed accordingly for the best chance at reaching your customers at the moment that matters.

What is CRM?

CRM in online advertising uses the collected customer data to shape the relationships and interactions between a brand and its customers. By combining different marketing strategies and practices, a brand can manage this data with a CRM platform create highly personalized, ultra-targeted experiences for its users.

What are the benefits of CRM?

The old saying goes that “the customer is always right” and while that isn’t an iron-clad strategy, the phrase highlights a customer’s influence on any business’ source of income; you can’t make money without customers. That’s why it’s important to cater to their needs and preferences and build long-lasting bonds.

Happy customers aren’t only loyal customers. They can spread positive messages, recommendations, and good reviews, resulting in a larger customer base and consequently securing more sales and profit.

There are so many reasons that a business will engage with CRM when it comes to online advertising. CRM really offers invaluable insights and can offer you a whole lot of customer information that will then be at your disposal when it comes to crafting high-quality and high-performing PPC campaigns.

Some of the main perks of using CRM in your online marketing include:

• Helping you to leverage the contacts in your CRM database
• Drive shoppers to your site through social media posts
• Encourage repeat purchases through retention-focused campaigns
• Improve customer retention through retention-focused campaigns
• Help with customer acquisition
• Maximise the success of remarketing efforts
• Boost the performance of PPC

CRM really does help your company and brand to reach your full base’s potential, rather than just the simple to catch customers who are naturally more easily drawn in.

How to get started with CRM

Of course, CRM can be applied to many areas of your business. But for now, let’s focus on how CRM can drive your digital marketing campaigns.

To manage CRM data, you need CRM software. A high-quality CRM system can help your business to build your customer base while maintaining a personalised relationship with the customers that you do obtain. Of course, you need to spend some time considering your business’ needs and preferences before investing in a platform. This will help you to choose the right one the first time around and to benefit from your investment as much as possible. You can then take a look at the different options on the market and select the one that ticks as many of your boxes as possible.

Not all CRM software is the same but they follow the same principles:

1. Import contacts
2. Clean up data
3. Assign data
4. Outline next steps
5. Set up sales pipelines
6. Create segments and filters
7. Set tasks
8. Create tickets

Examples of CRM data

CRM systems gather customer data from multiple channels where a customer has interacted with a brand, including:

• The brand’s website
• Telephone
• Email
• Live chat
• Social media
• Direct mail

In terms of the data collected for CRM, these can also include:

• Geolocation
• Purchase history
• Feedback – positive or negative
• Marital status
• Contact details
• Average review scores
• Spending habits

A good CRM system will integrate the information from all of these areas, showing you what deals are on the table, what stage they’ve reached, who you should be reaching out to and when you should reach out to them for optimal results.

Next, it’s important to fully understand your chosen CRM system. So many businesses make the mistake of investing in CRM and assuming the results will instantly roll in. This isn’t true. As with any other form of software, it has to be used wisely and effectively to have any positive impact or benefit for your business. So, fully understand your CRM systems and train relevant staff members to use it effectively and precisely too.

The secret weapon: CRM automation

Automation saves time and resources. For large amounts of CRM data, it comes in handy for boring tasks, allowing teams to track and manage their customers with ease.

Besides automating sales processes, CRM automation also empowers sales departments to focus more on difficult decisions – the kind of decisions that need human interactions. There’s also an opportunity for teams to collaborate for example sales and devs or sales and marketing.

What is the cost of CRM?

It’s relatively difficult to outline one set cost for CRM – even when focusing on one company and the CRM packages they’re providing. Ideally, companies offering CRM software would give you a set price list, detailing their prices with a per-user breakdown. But often, this isn’t the case. Costs can be hidden and obscured, so it’s important to really look into costs before getting started.

It’s also important to understand that costs differ depending on the status and reputation of your chosen CRM provider, your region, and add ons that you may need. Put simply, you need to request upfront costs before getting tied in.

Here are some examples of CRM software costs (data correct as of 2021):

• Zoho: £10 per user per month for a Standard subscription billed annually. Try it free for 14 days.
• Monday.com: Starting from £7 per user per month on a Basic package for a minimum of 3 users. Try it free for 14 days.
• Pipedrive: Starting from £12.50 per user per month on a Essential package billed annually. Try it free for 14 days.
• Less Annoying CRM: Starting from £15 per user per month. Try it free for 30 days.
• Keap: Starting from $11 per month if you sign up for 5 months on a Lite package. Try it free for 14 days.

Summary

CRM has always been important in marketing. It can help your business provide the best customer service, improve customer engagement, and build customer loyalty to your brand. It’s also essential for growth. Without it, you may find it difficult to build genuine bonds with your userbase so if you haven’t already, consider investing in your customer relationship processes.

It may sound too good to be true. But, in this case, it’s not. So to answer all questions you might have about how the Adzooma Marketplace works. 

Let’s get stuck in. 

What is the Adzooma Marketplace? 

Adzooma Marketplace is an online marketplace for digital agencies, freelancers, consultants, businesses, training providers, software providers and more to promote their business to customers who are looking for their services right now.

Basically, if you’ve got a service or product to offer, you can advertise it here. 

Adzooma users are in the market for particular services and are ready to buy. They visit the Marketplace, search for what they need and see a list of all the available businesses that are ready to take on their project. 

Users can easily compare the businesses in this list, making it easy for them to choose their next agency and get in touch. 

• Our users love Adzooma Marketplace because it makes it easy to find the service that can help grow their business. 
• Businesses love Adzooma Marketplace because it brings them high-quality leads and increases their profits. 

Why should businesses use Adzooma Marketplace? 

Adzooma Marketplace isn’t a simple directory, it’s a lead generation tool. 

Users come to Adzooma Marketplace because they have spend ready and need an agency, freelancer or business to provide a certain service. If your business is up there, you’ll be immediately advertised to high-quality leads looking to buy.

It’s much more targeted than other forms of advertising and lead generation because our users already know what they want. They just need the right service to provide it. 

All listings will come with a full client dashboard, allowing our clients to accurately track all leads that they’ve earnt through the Marketplace. 

Why do clients use Adzooma Marketplace?

Our users love Adzooma Marketplace because it makes it easy to find the exact agency or business that will provide the service they need. 

We have over 50,000 users on our platform alone that are actively advertising their business online. These are the businesses that are on the lookout for other ways to grow and increase their profits. And to find them, they’re using the Adzooma Marketplace. 

This isn’t just marketing agencies. It’s a range of freelancers, software, training and services that they’re in the market for. Our users are those that already know what they want and just need someone to fulfil it. 

What makes Adzooma Marketplace different?

There are different directories and online marketplaces that your business could sign up to. But none of them compare to the Adzooma Marketplace. 

What makes Adzooma Marketplace different is its users. 

Unlike other options out there, our users are ready to buy. They’re users that are actively advertising and wanting to grow their business – they just need experienced businesses to help them on their journey. 

Adzooma Marketplace isn’t a bland list of businesses. It’s an active, real-time marketplace that pairs up high-quality leads with the best brands, with the added advantage of a digital team working behind the scenes to make all of this possible. 

Does Adzooma Marketplace really work?

Yes, it does. 

But don’t just take our word for it. See what one of our clients have had to say here:

What’s included in an Adzooma Marketplace listing?

If you just want to see an example, why not check out Boxer’s listing.

Your listing includes the following information, in a neat and easy to scan format: 

• Business Summary: This is a short description of your business to give users an at-a-glance view of your services. This is the description that will show up in a search listing and prompt users to click onto your profile and view more. 
• Your logo
• A longer business description: Underneath the short business summary, you’ll have the space to write about your business or services in as much detail as you want. There’s no limit here. 
• Partner badges: Is your agency a certified partner? Show your partner badges in style to get more eyes on your listing. 
• Image gallery: Want to upload images of your work or agency? No problem. Add as many images to your listing as you like. This is a great idea for visual services, such as design or website agencies, or software providers to provide an inside look at their platform. 
• Areas of expertise: This is a quick bullet list of services that you offer, such as advertising, PPC, iOS development and more. Users will be able to search for your agency using these subcategories as well. 
• Industry specialities: If you specialise in any specific industries or areas, list them here. This can be anything from gaming, sports, pharmaceutical, and more. 
• Languages: Multi-lingual? Let people know by listing the languages you can speak in. 
• Target audience: This is where you list what customers you cover, such as B2B, B2C or enterprise clients. 
• Location: Let people know where you’re physically based by listing all your office locations.

All this information on your listing is yours to control and update as and when you see fit. 

As well as all this, each listing will have a place for customers to leave reviews about your company. This is a fantastic way to gain trust and encourage leads to get in touch.

What do I get for signing up to Adzooma Marketplace?

If you sign up to Adzooma Marketplace, you get access to high-quality leads already looking for your business and services. That’s something you just can’t get anywhere else. 

As standard, Adzooma Marketplace packages include: 

• Your own listing on the Adzooma Marketplace
• A dedicated account manager to help support and grow your business
• Guest articles or editorials opportunities on the Adzooma blog

Custom packages and features are also available. If you’re interested in promoting your business through a variety of extra marketing opportunities such as homepage takeovers, blog sponsorship, category sponsorship, pop-ups, featured spots or webinars, get in touch with our team.

We’ll create a package to suit you. 

How do leads get in touch with my business through the Adzooma Marketplace? 

Each Marketplace listing has two clear CTAs that users can use to directly contact your business. These are: 

• Send A Message: This allows users to message you directly on Adzooma Marketplace, which you can see and respond to through your dashboard. 
• Visit Website: Users can click directly through to your website if they want more information before they get in touch. 

All website visits and interactions are tracked and recorded via your dashboard. 

Can I track the leads that I’ve earnt through Marketplace?

Yes, you can track all your leads and performance through your client dashboard. This will show you key metrics and information, such as: 

• Summary View: How many times your listing appeared on the search results
• Detail View: How many times a user clicked on your listing to see more details
• Leads: How many times users clicked the Send Email button and sent a message
• Website Views: How many times people clicked on that link to visit the owner’s external website
• Total Viewers: How many times people clicked on the listing to see more details since the time of the listing’s creation

How much does Adzooma Marketplace cost? 

There are 4 pricing packages for Adzooma Marketplace, all designed to fit businesses of different levels and budgets. 

Not sure what package you should be on? Just get in touch with our sales team, tell them about your business needs and we’ll advise you on the best one for you. 

Remember, we also offer custom packages and features with additional marketing opportunities, including homepage takeovers, blog sponsorship, category sponsorship, pop-ups, featured spots or webinars. If that sounds like you, get in touch with our team. 

Do I have to create the listing myself?

No one knows your business like you do. 

That’s why we let you create your own listing, so you can get across all the important information and sell your services in the best possible way. Once done, your Account Manager will carry out a QA check, making sure there’s no typos, broken links or errors in your listing before pushing it live. 

However, if you want us to create your listing for you, just let us know. However, this will be at an extra cost. 

If you think of something else later on, it’s easy to make changes. Just log on to your dashboard and make all the changes you want. 

How long does it take to sign up? 

Signing up to Adzooma Marketplace only takes a few minutes. We’ll create you a login and you can get started building your listing. Once done, our account managers will verify your business and check over your listing before pushing it live.

Overall, it will only take a few hours from sign up to go-live, depending on how much time you want to spend building your listing. 

In some cases, such as weekend or evening applications, it may take until the next working day to get your listing live. 

Can anyone sign up to Adzooma Marketplace?

Only legitimate agencies, freelancers and businesses can sign up to the Adzooma Marketplace. This is to protect both our users who trust Adzooma Marketplace to find them the best services, as well as our clients.

Adzooma Marketplace is a place of quality, and we won’t damper that with illegitimate businesses. 

As long as your brand can be verified by our team, we’ll welcome you on board. 

Why should I guest post on Adzooma?

Publishing content on trusted, high quality blogs like Adzooma has a number of huge business boosting benefits.

Not only is it perfect for building your brand’s authority by being seen as an expert in your industry, but there are also a number of SEO benefits too which can boost your rankings in the SERPs.

And did you know that:

• Marketers who prioritize blogging are 13x more likely to have a positive ROI on their efforts
• 70% of people would prefer to learn about a company through articles rather than advertisements
• 62.96% of readers perceive blogs with multiple authors to be more credible

Our blog content is shared on many industry-leading websites and blogs, and attracts thousands of interested visitors to our website and social channels, who can read your post.

With an average of over 45,000+ visitors to Adzooma’s blog a month and growing, that’s a lot of eyes on your content.

And as the blog is completely targeted to the digital marketing industry, many of those visitors could potentially be interested in what you offer.

How do I publish guest posts on Adzooma?

You can claim your guest post by following this link.

Or if you’d like, you can speak to one of our team to find out more information about guest posting or any other advertising that you want to get out on the Adzooma Marketplace. 

We’ve written this in-depth piece on guest blogging – why it’s worth it and how to get started, which you should give a read if you want to learn more.

And you can take a look at some examples of these content partnerships here: 

• The Importance Of Google Ads Structure, by Amin Moslehi, Director of Crystal Marketing. 
• 4 Effective Ways To Promote Your App, by Izaak Crook, Head of Marketing at AppInstitute. 
• How To Get The Most Out of PPC For Small Businesses, by Sam Carr, Marketing Manager at PPC Protect.

How do I get started? 

Joining Adzooma Marketplace is quick and easy. 

Head over to this page to see our packages and sign up. Once done, we’ll send you a login to get started on your listing, which your account manager will review, verify and get live and running within a few hours. 

Got any other questions? Why not book a call with one of our sales team, who will guide you through the entire process and help advise you on which package is best for your business. 

If you’re a business looking for the services to grow, head over to Adzooma Marketplace to find the right service or agency for you. 

Now imagine if you could reach out to this prospective buyer and secure the deal almost as if you’ve read their mind. Well, with B2B intent data, this power can be yours.

So what is B2B intent data?

Let’s put it this way: Your prospects are right now out there, looking for a solution to a problem that you can solve. They search online, consume information, shape opinions on solutions, and read about alternatives to alleviate their pain. But they’re not asking for help from your sales team.

Intent data indicates which leads or accounts perform research actively online. As they search, they’re scored on thousands of topics. It’s basically any information about the willingness and the readiness of an account to buy a product or service. When their high-fit accounts are in buying mode for their specific solution, this data is used to inform sales and marketing teams. Intent data, when used correctly, significantly improves conversions and sales.

Intent data is sales and marketing intelligence. Intent data of today typically observes online behavior of content, competitors, activities, influencers, and social media that signify the study and future purchase.

Collated from a range of digital sources, intent data largely uses cookies to monitor for key intent search terms; so it can pinpoint when a target account or prospect is in an active buying journey – enabling informed, timely campaign responses.

B2B intent data offers insight into a web customer’s purchasing intent, enabling you to assess whether and when a prospect is actively considering or trying to buy your (or similar) goods or solutions.

Yes, intent data is more important now than ever for a couple of reasons:

1. Buyers are starting their research journey before they start talking to salespeople

As a salesperson, if I can understand who’s already doing research and tap into that conversation, I have a huge advantage. Every day inside every company, some employees are doing research on projects and initiatives that the company has to execute.

What Intent data does is it takes the research that’s being done on the B2B web, collects it, and then looks for spikes in that type of research.

2. The noise in marketing technology

There are more emails; there are more ads. So to be able to cut through that noise with really relevant messaging at the right time, again, gives you a big leg up. So the really unique thing about the way our Intent Data gathers B2B Intent data signals is that they’re doing it across 4,000 of the world’s largest, highly trafficked B2B sites. That’s really covering the entire B2B digital web. So inside of every single company, somebody is researching certain topics. Well, regardless of where they’re doing research, our Intent Data 

Software is picking up that research. It’s then collecting it, and it’s looking at searches across that network of over 4,000 B2B sites. So, where the next closest person providing Intent data might look at tens of millions of intent signals every quarter, the software looks at tens of billions of intent signals every quarter. And so what we’re able to do now is look across all of the companies that we profile and look for which companies are spiking on research for specific topics that are relevant for our customers.

To find out more, visit our website.

So, why is intent data so important?

Intent data is important for many reasons. It’s got great applications for both sales and marketing. As a marketer, the way I think about intent is it gives me access to a broader funnel. So lately, I’ve been ranting a lot about this idea that our own marketing and sales funnels are a very myopic view of our total addressable market because we can’t possibly contain every account or every buyer that’s actually going to buy from us, however there’s a broader funnel that exists. It’s everyone, including you and all of your competitors, and how engaged the leads, and contacts and accounts are with them. That makes up all the people that are potentially going to buy or are actually getting ready to buy. So what intent does is it broadens your horizon, allowing you to see past the engagement that’s happening within your own website or in any of your offline events. It then basically is able to say…like, hey, here are the people that are exhibiting intent to purchase’. 

A lot of that has to do with the fact that the buyer’s journey has changed. I know people have been saying this for a super-long time, but it really has. As content becomes commoditised, fewer and fewer people are choosing to engage with brand content. That’s not as fun but that’s really about what their product does and what value it brings.So now they’re going to third-party websites to get reviews, and other information, about a brand that they’re thinking of buying from,  so you need to be able to see that type of activity also. Understand who’s doing it. Distill it down to the accounts that actually matter, and then deliver it to your sales team. And say, hey, here’s a target account or account list. They’re looking to buy, and the thing they’re looking to buy is something that we actually sell. So let’s get to them before one of our competitors does.

How to use it?

Looking at the common data attributes can see that it’s any signals that show this. And this core signal has three different factors:

• The first is the intent type. What is the account actually looking to buy? is it any piece of software? Perhaps it’s some accounting help or some help via a consultant.
• Intense strength. This is how ready the account is actually to buy the product or service.
• Intent recency. How long ago was it? If it was last year, it’s probably not so hot, whereas if it’s this week or month, the account is probably a lot more ready and willing to be sold.

And this links to how the data is actually collected. 

If you imagine this from a buyer’s perspective, first, the account will realise that I need a different product or service. Let’s say they need some consulting. 

They’re going to put some research in and have some people from the company look into what options are available. 

Then we’re going to look at the specific providers and the products they have and put some research into this. 

And from this, you can collect data into what they’re looking for and how long they’ve spent on the specific research. This could be signing up for webinars, signing up for newsletters, or downloading white papers. All this information could be collected as they’re researching. After this initial stage of research has happened, they can go into properly comparing the individual prices and product options of the service they’ve actually decided to select. As this goes on, you can see that the intent strength really builds. When someone gets to a comparison, they’re really ready. This is when it’s good to reach out and make sure you’ve secured it. 

So when you’re assuring the quality of your B2B intent data, it’s basically just assuming that you’re getting the strongest quality signal.

• How are the signals collected? It has to do with the technical methods during the research process we mentioned above. Have they been in contact with a person? Do you measure dwell time on a website or maybe the clicks onto pages? The technical methods will determine the quality and strength of the actual signal.
• How recently were the signals collected? As we mentioned, if it was last year, it’s probably not so hot. Whereas if it’s still this quarter, maybe even last week, you can tell that the iron is still hot. So you can go.
• Finally, is the data on the right scale? For you, the scale is always important, especially with B2B intent data. It can be hard to get data on the right scale to make sure you’ve got that.

Then once you’ve got your beautiful scale data, how are you going to use it?

Well, it mostly comes down to account-based marketing. You can

identify some early intent in the account and reach out at this early stage of the process to help guide them. 70 percent of the time, the salesperson who gets there first secures the deal. So. if you reach out to the account just when they’re ready, almost like you’ve read their mind, there’s a high chance that you will be the one to secure their purchase. Then once you’ve got them on board, you’ve got the marketing team nurturing this potential; you can then prioritize them when they’re hot and send your sales teams to secure the deal. 

Then finally, once you’ve got them as a customer, we’ve got to retain them. If you start to notice that they’re looking at competitors or maybe they’re not so happy with your service, you can use this information from the intent data to make sure that you retain them. 

Practical ways to use buyer intent data

With buyer intent data, I’m able to go into our platform, apply filters that are relevant to my territory, so whether it’s geographic location, whether it’s employee size, revenue size, whatever the case may be, I’m able to go in, apply these filters, save the search. What this does is it literally sources for me every single week. I get an email every week, saying, “These are the companies that are actively searching for a topic that is relevant to your product, how much it scored.” I’m able to go after them, and it actually then backs it up with relevant contact data to go after them with direct dials and direct emails, to be able to not only know what they’re searching but actually have the people to go after too. 

If you’re like me, and you’re in sales, the most time-consuming part of your day is finding accounts to go after. Not only are you just throwing things at a wall and hope that it sticks, but with this intent data, you can actually find companies within your territory that are actively searching for a product and a topic relevant to your company and be able to go after them at the right time. So you’re not throwing things at a wall and hope that it sticks. You’re actually creating a sales cycle within a relevant time period within the right time within the right people.

Is intent data really a new thing?

Is some’s intent to purchase a new thing? Surely not. That’s why actionable intent insights have existed for a while, and many larger enterprises have already incorporated intent consideration in their strategies. Because customers are creating and sharing more data than ever before, and technology has evolved, marketers are even better equipped to gain a granular view of intent and move from ‘topic’ to ‘keyword’ insights.

The insight intent data provides can help us understand exactly where an account is in its buying journey. It is based on the content and keywords that buyers are researching. This is an additional layer of timing, relevance, and context within campaigns, especially account based campaigns.

It also clarifies the sentiment attached to certain topics (positive or negative), giving a more comprehensive view than more traditional profiling or behavioural data.

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There are a number of reasons why you’d do this:

• It’s a great way to drive traffic to your website
• It’s a chance for you to gain excellent exposure for your brand
• It’s a way to build relationships with people in your industry
• It’s a long trusted method of giving your site’s Domain Rating/Domain Authority a helping hand in the form of backlinks

We here at Adzooma have been putting guest blogging into practice for a while now and we’ve seen some great results:

However, these results aren’t all that easy to come by. The seas of guest blogging can be a little choppy, it’s certainly not plain sailing. There are rules to abide by, best practices to follow, and a long list of things you need to know before you start.

In this article I’m going to guide you through all that along with helping you outline your guest blogging goals, what to pitch, how to pitch and where to pitch.

Now let’s get started.

Where should you start?

When you start considering guest blogging for your business you firstly need to define what you actually want from it.

We pointed out the main four reasons for doing so at the top, but I just want to expand on that a little:

1. Increasing your brand’s exposure

Writing guest posts simply puts your brand’s name in front of people. Some sites won’t allow you to sell your services in the article, nor even mention your brand in the article, however you will always be able to feature yourself in the bio and on highly viewed sites this is great exposure – hopefully it’ll culminate in an uptick in brand searches too.

2. Driving traffic to your website

This may come directly or indirectly. Not every site will allow you a link back so that’s where you’ll rely on brand searches to do the job. However most will, and with smart in-post links you may see those referral metrics in Google Analytics skyrocket.

3. Building relationships with people in your industry

It’s always important to be on good terms with those in your industry and those in your industry’s press – I scratch your back, you scratch my back is important in business. Guest posting gives you an excuse to make contact with people and from there who knows what it’ll lead to.

4. Boosting your website authority

Now in 2021, this is a little more difficult than it used to be. Google have recently said that all guest posts should be no follow links, therefore the “link equity” you gain from no follow backlinks is lessened and won’t have as much of an impact on your website’s authority in the eyes of Google – ignoring this can result in manual penalties. However, contrary to what some people say, no follow links are a signal and will still have some impact, so don’t discount them entirely.

You don’t have to just kill one bird with one stone, though. You can go for all four. This may dilute your offering so have a think about it, but once you’ve decided what your goals are (note: it may be hard to put a number by these goals to begin with), it’s important to dig a little deeper if you really want to see the fruits of your labour down the line.

For example, if you want to increase your brand’s exposure, you need to ask yourself questions like:

• “In what way do I want to increase my brand’s exposure?”
• “How do I want to be perceived when people see my brand associated with this content?”

If you don’t define and scope this out properly, your brand may be seen and forgotten, or seen and associated with something entirely different from what you want to be associated with.

The same with driving traffic. Ask questions like:

• “Do you just want people to land onto your website?
• “Do you want people to land on to your website and then buy your product?”

There is no right or wrong answer here, conversions are great but not the be all and end all.

Everything is dependent on what you want to gain.

So start by asking yourself as many questions as you can, like some of the examples provided above. From there you can really drill down into what you want to achieve and why.

This is such a vital step and needs to be in your mind throughout the whole process, because it will make everything else so much easier.

What should I post?

Relevant content, of course. If you’re running a surveying company, you don’t want to write about the intricate details of Tom Brady’s career just because it’s the only way you can get a backlink on a high domain site. This won’t move any of your needles.

It also doesn’t make you look like an expert. Instead, if you’re a design agency and you’re writing an article about UX laws and you’re wowing the reader, that reader is going to go, “Wow, this person really knows what they’re talking about, who are they?!” Then you’ve automatically made yourself look like a thought leader in someone’s eyes.

But more than relevancy and your expertise you need to think a bit wider too, like for example evergreen content. Evergreen content is essentially timeless content, the Pink Floyd or Miles Davis of content, content that won’t go out of date.

Because essentially, if you’ve got a chance of guest posting, you want your article to always be out there so you’re still getting readers, clicks and potentially conversions five years down the line.

This isn’t easy, especially in some industries where things change all the time, plus it’s not a hard and fast rule either. Some sites will only accept newsworthy content, which is fine and newsworthy content has the potential to create great noise on social and via Google News too. But it’s important to get the balance right.

It’s also really important to soft sell your expertise too. Some sites you can overtly sell yourself within the copy, but you’ve got to be smooth with it. If all of a sudden you post a pretty much CTA in the copy, people are going to be wise to what you’re doing and be put off.

Instead, be subtle and make it part of your article. Here’s an example we did for PPC Hero for an article on the Best APIs for SEO & PPC Managers:

We listed all the best solutions, then featured ourselves in the list. This is a great way to make yourself look great while not drawing attention to the fact you’re selling to them in the process.

However, some sites you’ll have to be even more subtle. So when we wrote an article on How to Get National PR Coverage When Starting From Zero for Jeff Bullas it was crucial for us to give context around who Adzooma are so the reader could relate our method to our PR goals. And there was the crucial place to soft sell and bring attention to the Adzooma product:

It’s also important to create content that will resonate with the site’s audience too, but I’m slightly stepping on the toes of the next section so I’ll move on to that now.

How to pitch

This will differ enormously from site to site. Some sites have really strict guidelines when it comes to pitching like Wired for example. While others want you to give them the blog straight off the bat like PPC Hubbub.

Of course, always follow the pitching guidelines where possible, but if there are no pitching guidelines, here are a few tips:

• Thoroughly scout the website you’re pitching to. To create a successful pitch you need to make sure what you’re pitching fits in what they currently publish
• Make your pitch personal. I know sending out mass emails saves time, but people see straight through it in 2021
• Provide more than one topic and include a two, three sentence explainer of what it will consist of and why it will be a great fit for their site
• Be informal, but not over friendly. We’ve received some awful, sickly pitches down the years and there’s nothing more off putting
• Give a little bit of background of who you are and why you’re an expert on the topic that you’re pitching – a link to recently published work or LinkedIn page works here
• Tell them you will follow SEO best practice and include a target keyword. Every site loves it if you can offer them a potential to see growth in the SERPs

All these tips aren’t just a good way of getting published. They will also make your content perform better once it’s live too, especially the scouting of the previous articles. This gives you an idea of what tone to use and what you can include in your content like images, screenshots, stats, infographics, case studies, etc.

You won’t get replies to every pitch you send out, so reach out to people who know you or have mentioned you online to begin with.

Also, this is a long term tactic, but it will pay off. Try to personally interact with journalists, thought leaders and colleagues within your industry through social media. It sounds almost too simple in practice, but what you’re doing is moving from unknown emailer to, “Hey, that person I converse with semi-often on social media emailed me. I like the way they think, I’ll give this a read.”

Because no matter how great your idea, until they know who you are, you’re outside the circle of trust. But by treating these people like actual real human beings and interacting with them online, you’re striking up a genuine personal relationship that could help in a professional capacity too.

It’s important to always have your emotional intelligence dialed up so as not to come across creepy or weird, obviously, and I’m not saying you should start faking being someone’s friend. But just treat them like a real human being, offer them your personality and your insight, then see what happens when you start offering them your work later down the line.

Where should I post and where can I post?

This of course depends on your starting plan, but whatever you’ve decided upon, that word relevancy again is the key for this section.

So when you’re searching for places to post, make sure it relates in some way to your business. It doesn’t have to be a like for like site, say you run a plumbing business you could look to websites who write about small businesses, or maybe go a little bit more out there and go to a site who write about environmental sustainability.

As long as there is something there that fits naturally in with your business and your goals, then that’s the place for you.

But don’t forget to look at traffic and Domain Rating (DR) / Domain Authority (DA) too. If you’re wanting clicks to your site and to build your brand, posting on a site that doesn’t receive any traffic isn’t going to move any needles, and if you’re looking to improve your website’s authority by getting a link on a low DR / DA site, neither will that.

Moz’s SEO toolbar is a free easy way to keep an eye on site DA – you can just add it as an extension to your Chrome browser and everytime you land on a website it will tell you the site’s DA. While adding the free Keyword Surfer to Chrome will give you the estimated monthly traffic for every URL that appears in the SERPs. They’re two great tools that don’t add any time to your research process.

There are no benchmarks you should look out for, it’s best to just judge for yourself by comparing your site’s DR / DA and monthly traffic to a potential guest posting spot. However I’d avoid going for sites with spam scores over 30 (Moz’s toolbar comes equipped with a Spam Score indicator too). These sites can hurt the health of your site so should be avoided.

So where do you find sites that will house your blogs? Here’s a few places you should look and few techniques to finding more:

Adzooma

Of course I had to put this first. I’ll keep it short, but we here at Adzooma are currently open to guest posts across a whole array of marketing disciplines. As long as your piece has some kind of marketing element to it, we’re all ears.

You can find more information here or get in touch today.

Websites to guest post

There are some great resources out there if you’re looking to find loads of sites to contact in one place.

This piece from Solvid features over 300 websites that accept guest posts, including specific categories for business, digital marketing, lifestyle and technology, while they’ve also inserted a column for DA, Alexa (site popularity), and “difficulty” to get published.

Advanced Web Ranking have also created a similar resource, featuring over 150 sites, including specific categories for digital marketing, travel & tourism, finance, sports & fitness, health, home & garden, family & community, business, and much more. They’ve also included the DA beside each one too.

And there is a website called AllTop.com too which is intensely comprehensive, though it is a little bit of a mad site and not quite as structured and neat as the other two, but if you’re willing to dig it’s a great resource.

I must say, some on these sites are outdated (which isn’t surprising given how many sites they’ve collated), but there are certainly more hits than misses, and they definitely give you a head start in your search for publication.

Utilise the search engines

Google is a big friend here, as is Twitter. You’ll find loads of potential opportunities by just using the following search strings on both sites. Let’s say you’re in the finance industry, for ease:

• Finance “guest post”
• Finance “write for us”
• Finance “guest article”
• Finance “contributing writer”
• Finance “submit blog post”
• Finance “articles wanted”
• Finance “contribute to our site”
• Finance “contributors”
• Finance “guest column”
• Finance “submit content”
• Finance “articles wanted”

Then have a think about prolific guest bloggers in your space. You may not know any off the top of your head, so this may require a little bit of searching to find someone

My recommendation would be to have a click around on some authors on your industry’s most well known blogs and then give them a Google search.

I’m going to show you the example of what I found off the bat with Kirk Williams here, he’s a big player in the paid search industry:

These are just the first results that came up, and 4 of the 6 results are guest posts. There are loads more further down and on the following pages.

Analyse your competitors

So, this one you will have to find a paid solution for. Two great ones are SEMRush and SEO PowerSuite.

Once you’ve signed up, though, it’s really easy. Say you’re using SEMrush, you just have to head to the backlinks analytics tab, type in the domain and you’ll get a list like so:

I’ve filtered these by Follow links, initially. Then the process is just clicking each link to try and find the guest posts. Once you’ve found them, head to the contact page and send your pitch over.

Another tool you can use is Adzooma’s SEO Performance Report which will allow you to get ahead of your competitors by finding keywords they’re missing. You can also compare your client’s performance with a competitor, showing how they compare with the competition.

The report is available to all Adzooma users, try the basic version for free to get a taste of what this report can offer. Not an Adzooma user? Sign up for free, here.

How to know if you’re successful

Like I said earlier in the article, it’s hard to put a specific number beside goals you want to achieve when you’re starting out but this will become easier once you have a benchmark to compare yourself to.

But knowing whether you’re successful or not comes down to two things really: being published and an uptick in analytics.

Yes, being published is a success. It’s not always easy to do, especially when you’re starting out and you’re unknown. Don’t let me put you off by saying that, but I don’t want you to think this is an easy process because it’s not.

However, it does get easier. Just like in every aspect of the world, once you’ve got that initial foot in the door, other doors will open.

Then from there, it’s important to keep an eye on analytics. Have a look at those referral stats in Google Analytics and brand searches in Google Search Console, see if your guest posts are making an impact or not.

If they’re not, maybe the site you posted on isn’t great or maybe you didn’t soft sell yourself well in the article.

Whatever it may be, don’t give up. Finesse the formula and get straight back to it.

Or just get a digital PR agency to do it for you.

But ad extensions definitely improve your CTR – Google have said so themselves.

What you need are ad extensions that boost your conversions and give you a healthy ROI. They also need to be appropriate for your business. There are many different formats to choose from, including:

• Location information
• Extra text
• Call buttons
• Direct links to webpages
• Star ratings

If you’re thinking it’s a lot to take in, fret not! This article will discuss what Google and Microsoft ad extensions are, what each ad extension type does and how to choose the correct extensions for your business so you can get the most out of them.

What is an ad extension?

Ad extensions are extra pieces of information that “extend” your ads with useful features for users. Because they expand your ads, that means they take up more space on the search results page which, in itself, increases CTR. Instant bonus.

The whole point is to add as much content to your ad as possible and thanks to these extensions your ad will have higher visibility and prominence in the results, adding value and improving your ROI.

The total number of clicks usually increases, as you are providing people with extra ways to interact and contact you, such as with maps or calls for instance.

When do ad extensions appear?

Google and Microsoft can approve or disapprove extensions, just like they can with ads and keywords. Any disapproved extensions won’t show and you need to edit these and re-submit to be reviewed.

Extensions don’t appear in your ad all the time, they’ll show when:

• The extension or combination of extensions has been predicted to improve your ad performance.
• The position and rank of your ad are high enough for the extensions to show up. To show extensions, Google and Microsoft both require a minimum Ad Rank before it shows ads.

As there’s a limited amount of space in the search results, ads in the higher positions will obviously get the best chance for their extensions to show up. Generally, higher ads will have more extensions than the lower ones.

There are are free tools out like Adzooma that also give you recommendations of which ad extensions to use and where. By heading to the Opportunities tab in your Adzooma account, under best practice, you will see a number of extension Opportunities that you can apply to your account like below.

From there if you click on details you will be given a run down on how you can improve your campaigns and ad groups with these ad extensions, meaning you don’t have to spend mining down into the granular of every ad yourself.

Best practices

• Make sure you use all the extensions you feel are right for your business.
• Try adding 4 or more extensions, such as callouts, site links, structured snippets and another you feel is right for you.
• You can also create extensions at higher account levels such as account or campaign level if it suits your larger goals.
• Choose extensions to achieve your main goal
• Use software to speed up the process

Location extensions

These extensions show your location and a link to your business details page, which can include your opening hours, directions etc. Their details can encourage physical visits to your premises. If you’d prefer them to call a centralized line, as opposed to a specific location, you can use call extensions within your location extensions.

Sitelink extensions

Use these to link people directly to specific pages on your site, such as your opening hours, product page or your order page.

Affiliate location extensions

This will help people find retail chain stores that sell your products.

App extensions

You can easily encourage people to download your app.

Callout extensions

Callout extensions can help your conversions by offering more beneficial info, such as “free delivery” or “24/7 customer support.”

Call extensions

By adding your phone number to your ad, you’ll encourage people to act immediately and call your business right now. That’s why call extensions are so handy.

Message extensions

These obviously encourage people to text you straight from your ad.

Structured snippet extensions

With this, you can show more info customers may find valuable and attractive, by selecting a predefined header such as a product or service category and listing relevant items.

Price extensions

Showcase your products, categories and prices so people can browse right from your ad. Only available in select countries.

Promotion extensions

Promotion extensions display special sales, discounts, and offers. Perfect for seasonal ads during Christmas, Black Friday, back-to-school, or Valentine’s Day.

Automated ad extensions

Review extensions

The ability to add useful quotes or rankings from published sources, is available on desktop in select languages.

Automated call extensions

General call extension can be added manually but Google and Microsoft may ad automated call extensions if your website has a contact number and you have call-based business goals or specific call campaigns.

Automated message extensions

These don’t require any set up either. Google and Microsoft may use automated message extensions if you’ve set business goals regarding receiving text messages.

Dynamic sitelink extensions

Dynamic sitelink extensions add the most relevant sitelinks to your search ads, allowing users to connect to your site directly from your ad to what they need.

Dynamic structured snippet extensions

Dynamic structured snippets add more descriptive text that helps people understand a business’s range of products and services. Using these extensions can improve CTR (click-through rate) and ROI (return on investment).

Google or Microsoft?

It shouldn’t be Google or Microsoft. It should be Google and Microsoft.

Advertising across multiple marketing channels is the key to success. Just like you wouldn’t neglect the radio if you were advertising on TV, just because you’re advertising on Google you shouldn’t neglect Microsoft.

Microsoft’s audience reaches 63 million users that Google doesn’t, while those users are both more affluent and educated in comparison to Google. Plus, the cost per click is so, so much cheaper on Microsoft in comparison as our research shows.

Not advertising on Microsoft yet? You can get $125 in free ad spend when you spend $25, thanks to our exclusive offer.

Then connect your account to Adzooma and manage both your Google and Microsoft campaigns from one screen.

Conclusion

Ad extensions can be beneficial to your business as they target your a more specific customer base.

Their value lies in the fact you can easily focus on the goal you want to achieve, such as increase click-through rates to your site, visits to your store, calls straight through to your business and much more.

They’re free and with a little practice they’re easy to implement, so it seems a waste not to use them. Particularly with callout and call extensions, they can make or break a conversion.

Yes, you need to spend a little time really getting to know them and it will be time well spent doing your research on each one and testing a few so you can see the difference they make to your results.

With a little time and practice, you could see a big difference in the number of people that actually engage with your business. The whole point of these extensions is to efficiently and cost-effectively increase clicks to your site, viewer engagement and ultimately, your bottom line.

We use search engines for almost everything, from looking for recipes to buying online. In fact, 89% of customers use search engines as their starting point for buying anything online.

But in order to be seen on search engines, you need to rank and, ideally, on the first page of a search engine results page (known as a SERP). SEO (search engine optimisation) is what makes that happen.

In this article, we look at what SEO is, the various aspects that make SEO important, and SEO techniques that will increase site traffic, search visibility, and brand awareness.

What is SEO?

SEO stands for search engine optimisation and it describes a series of techniques and strategies that help websites improve their visibility for relevant search queries.

But in order to turn that visibility into clicks, you need to rank as highly as possible and there are two main categories that can help:

• On-page SEO – optimising pages to rank higher on the SERPs and earn more organic traffic. This covers content and internal code (meta titles, meta descriptions, HTML, PHP, and CSS)
• Off-page SEO – using external factors like outreaching and link building to gain relevant backlinks from high-authority sites. The aim is the same as on-page—to rank higher in the SERPs.

For more on how you can improve these techniques, read our free ebook on how to grow your search traffic in 2021 .

But what is organic search, and why is it important for your business?

When we talk about organic search traffic, it means search results you don’t pay for. You get paid ads at the top and everything else underneath is organic.

What SEO does is help your business rank higher on search engines for relevant queries and generate more organic traffic. The fact you don’t have to pay for your listing makes it a crucial part of your marketing strategy.

How Google’s search algorithms works

Links are ordered based on their relevance to the user’s search query, the perceived user intent (“does the user want a how-to guide or a product page?”) and hundreds of other ranking factors determined by the search engine and its algorithms. You do a search and you get the list.

But search algorithms are a closely guarded secret, especially Google’s. It’s always adapting, with around 500-600 changes being made to it every single year. On top of that, Google’s search algorithms use hundreds of different factors to determine its rankings.

However, it’s not all algorithmic. Google also employs people to test the quality and relevance of its search algorithms:

To help ensure that Search algorithms meet high standards of relevance and quality, we have a rigorous process that involves both live tests and thousands of trained external Search Quality Raters from around the world. These Quality Raters follow strict guidelines that define our goals for Search algorithms and are publicly available for anyone to see.

Google has a page dedicated to explaining how its search algorithms works.

E-A-T

E-A-T stands for Expert, Authoritative, and Trustworthy and it refers to criteria that Google’s Quality Raters follow in their guidelines. But before E-A-T can be determined, Quality Raters need to figure out what the page is about and they use a Page Quality spectrum to do this (below).

According to the guidelines, pages or sites “without any beneficial purpose, including pages that are created with no attempt to help users, or pages that potentially spread hate, cause harm, or misinform or deceive users, should receive the Lowest rating.”

For all other pages, E-A-T looks at:

• The expertise of the writer
• The authoritativeness of the writer, the content, and the website
• The trustworthiness of the writer, the content, and the website

Another important part of E-A-T is topic relevance. When judging content, the guidelines ask what kind of expertise is needed for the page to be purposeful and states that “the standard for expertise depends on the topic of the page”.

Any website that’s relevant to the keywords, that’s trusted by other users, and gives valuable information will always be ranked highly. It’s exactly what their users are searching for after all.

This is good SEO and E-A-T is what you should be taken into account with all content you produce.

UX is also important

Bad UX includes:

• Poor navigation
• Slow page load speed
• Poor internal linking
• Inadequate site architecture

These are just four examples and they directly—and indirectly—affect your SEO efforts and many ranking factors. But more importantly, they can diminish your customers’ journey.

Stoney G deGeyter wrote in Search Engine Journal:

UX optimization is nothing more than focusing on the visitor. Everything we do in the sphere of web marketing has to have the visitor in mind. […] Search engines have some of the most advanced data mining operations in the world. They aren’t just helping people find what they want; they’re collecting data that helps them understand user behavior (sic). From that data, the algorithms get tweaked in order to give searchers more of what they want and less of what they don’t.

Improve your customer experience with great UI/UX designs via Adzooma Marketplace

Don’t duplicate!

You also need to create unique, useful content to serve the user. Anything that’s not relevant or is duplicated will get you penalised. You mustn’t confuse or delude users.

However, there may be reasons why you have duplicated content and there is a solution for that: canonical tags.

A canonical tag (written as rel="canonical") tells search engines that a URL is a duplicate of another URL. This prevents a search engine from treating them as duplicates and will only show the original in its SERPs.

SEO Performance Report

Adzooma’s SEO Performance Report analyzes your website and identifies immediate actions you can take to improve your SEO. You’ll receive a score out of 100, the closer you are to 100, the better optimised your website is.

You will then get a detailed breakdown of your performance into 4 key areas:

• Keyword performance
• Onsite SEO
• Page Speed
• Backlinks

By using the SEO report, you will have the tools to get ahead of your competitors, increase conversions and compliment your campaigns with more organic traffic. The basic SEO Performance Report is free to access for all Adzooma users.

Not an Adzooma user? Not to worry, you can create your free account here.

7 SEO techniques that boost organic traffic

Now you understand what “good SEO” looks like, it’s time to put it into practice.

But be warned: SEO is neither a quick fix not an on/off switch for your website. Strategies must be tested before they can be considered viable.

It can take months, even years to really see the impact of an SEO campaign, depending on your industry and how much competition you’re facing. Don’t expect to see instant results.

That being said, let’s get started with 7 SEO techniques to improve traffic and user experience.

1. Write for your customers, not algorithms

As deGeyter alluded to in his quote about UX, it’s UX all about focusing on the user and that means writing for them and not for an ever-changing algorithms. Producing content that “gamed” the system might have worked back in the day but times have changed and algorithms have evolved.

Instead, answer the questions that matter to your current and future customers. Make something that’s easy for them to use. And, make sure it’s relevant and what they’re actually searching for. It’ll move your Page Quality from Low to High in no time.

The better the user experience and the more relevant your content is, the more you’ll be rewarded.

2. Make your websites mobile-friendly

Google uses mobile-first indexing for their search algorithms.

This means that they’ll look at the mobile version of your site first when crawling and adding pages to its index.

Therefore it’s important that your site is mobile-friendly. Ensure it’s responsive, readable, and accessible.

This isn’t just important for SEO, but for your customers too.

We spend 59% of our time on mobile phones. So, it’s more than likely that your visitors will be finding your website on a mobile device. If it’s not mobile-friendly, they’re likely to go elsewhere.

It profits to make your website mobile-friendly.

In fact, 62% of companies that designed a mobile-specific website increased their sales. We’d say that’s worth investing in.

3. Website slow? Bad for SEO

Page speed is a ranking factor (albeit a small one).

It all plays back into offering great user experiences. People aren’t prepared to wait anymore. If a website takes more than 3 seconds to load, 40% of visitors will leave. What’s more, 80% of those will never return.

Digging deeper into that, Core Web Vitals will become ranking factors in 2021. These are a set of criteria that Google deems important in a page’s UX. The criteria are:

• Largest contentful paint (LCP)
• First input delay (FID)
• Cumulative layout shift (CLS)

They join other metrics as part of its Page Experience signals. I said earlier that page speed was a small ranking factor but to a user, it’s a large staying factor. Studies by Google have shown that visitors are 24% less likely to abandon the site when pages meet Core Web Vitals thresholds.

Sound complicated? We have two resources that will help. Read our guide on site speed optimisation and browse Adzooma Marketplace for a selection of SEO agencies to do the technical work for you.

4. Create purposeful content

One of the key aspects of SEO is creating new, unique, and helpful content.

An easy way to do this is keeping your website updated with a blog.

Keep publishing new things – but don’t copy your competitors. Write original content with useful information that your customers want to read.

Blogs are also a good way to rank for relevant keywords with content marketing and search intent (more on that later).

5. Target short and long-tail keywords

When you’re creating purposeful content for the Web, you need a keyword strategy. That means targeting short-tail and long-tail keywords.

Short-tail keywords are short phrases like “SEO tool” or “SEO agency”. They get the most searches on average but they’re highly competitive.

Long-tail keywords are longer phrases (usually 4 or more words). They get less searches on average but they’re easier to rank for as there’s less competition. But the best part? They make up 70% of all online searches.

They also convert better.

This is because your customers are usually later in their buying journey. Let’s say, for example, you have a bakery. People who are using keywords like “cake” are probably just browsing. But someone who searches for the long-tail keyword “custom chocolate cakes for parties” is ready to buy.

Whatever keywords you target—never let your content go to waste.

Share content on social media, create infographics, discuss topics on podcasts, use email marketing. Spreading relevant content on relevant distribution channels can indirectly improve SEO through visibility that can turn into backlinks, for example.

6. Search intent

It’s also important to write content with search intent in mind. Google likes to prioritise types of content for certain search terms. These are split into four categories:

• Informational – Question-based, mostly blog posts (like “What is SEO?”)
• Navigational – Usually branded articles (like “Adzooma blog”)
• Commercial – Lists or reviews of the best product or comparison pages (like “The best SEO tools in 2021″)
• Transactional – Product or service-specific with call-to-action words (like “Netflix free trial”)

Before you start writing, do a quick search for your targeted keyword and see what kinds of results you get. Then you can tailor your article and make it perfect.

7. Link building is your friend

Despite what some SEOs say, link building is great for your organic strategy.

This is where, in your content, you link to another website or page.

Don’t just link to anything though. Make sure that the links are relevant and trusted. Otherwise, your website might get associated with untrustworthy sources, which can damage your rankings.

Links work two ways. You can also get other sites to link to you.

This can get more visitors directly to your site. But more than that, it also helps your SEO, builds great relationships with others in your industry and makes your company stand out as leaders. It’s truly a win-win.

If you look back through this blog, you’ll notice us doing this exact same thing. It’s that simple.

If you’re looking for some more depth to really grow your traffic, check out our free SEO ebook which comes with a blueprint you can follow for long term SEO success.

SEO tools you can use

1. SEMrush’s Keyword Magic Tool

The tool can generate over 2 million keyword ideas for SEO and PPC campaigns and group them by topic. If you find a handful of interesting keywords, you can save them in the Keyword Analyzer and estimate the number of clicks and how likely you’ll rank for them in the top 10 of the SERPs.

2. Answer the Public

A digital PR favorite, Answer the Public finds the questions and queries that searchers are asking and gives a report based on Google SERPs. Their Pro version features include: unlimited searches, comparable data, language & location-based results and saved reports – you can access all of these fantastic for $99/month.

3. Checkbot

Checkbot is a great platform that finds critical SEO, speed and security problems before your website visitors do. They test hundreds of pages at once for broken links, duplicate titles, invalid HTML and loads of other checks – if there’s something wrong with your website, they will find it.

4. Advanced Web Ranking

Advanced Web Ranking (AWR) give you fresh daily, weekly and on demand rankings packed nicely into white label reports that are accessible from any device. They provide you with custom SEO reports which are fully customizable, straightforward and integrated with third-party reporting tools.

5. SEO PowerSuite

SEO PowerSuite holds enough tools for an SEO campaign of any caliber. It’s got everything from SEO analysis tool to keyword research tools to backlinks checkers to content editors to PPC ads optimization and much more. With its intuitive UI and a wealth of pro-level features, it’s a perfect SEO tool for newbies and experts alike.

6. Dashword

Dashword helps writers produce content that ranks with this keyword tool. The software uses self-built ML models to determine relevance based on data from the top 30 Google results of any given keyword. It then assigns a score to each topic and you can evaluate competitors’ content as well. A worthy addition to any SEO tool kit.

Further resources

• Beginners Guide To SEO: How To Grow Your Search Traffic in 2021
• Bing vs. Google: A Comparison
• Why Low Search Volume Keywords Are Good For SEO & The Web
• 18 of The Best SEO Keyword Tools & Tips
• How To Create Evergreen Content That Drives Traffic
• 8 Best SEO Agencies in 2020

They do this by removing irrelevant search queries from your ad groups, leaving you to focus on the keywords that matter. Refining your ad groups also means better targeting and an increase in return on investment (ROI).

In this guide, we look at how negative keywords work, why they’re important and how Adzooma can help you build powerful negative keyword lists.

What are negative keywords?

Negative keywords are keywords that stop your ads from appearing for certain search queries.

For example, if you sold trees and you added “Christmas” as a negative keyword, that would tell Google Ads to not show your ad for any searches containing the term “Christmas” such as:

• “Christmas trees”
• “Artificial Christmas trees”
• “trees for Christmas”
• “tree toppers for Christmas trees”

This also works on the Display Network, so your ad would appear less on sites where your negative keywords matched a site’s content.

Negative keywords can be added at the account, campaign, and ad group level and understanding how they work can really make a difference.

How do they work?

There’s often a tendency to target all types of keywords related to your business. But that’s not the smart way to use Google Ads. You only want ads to appear for relevant searches where the user is most likely to click and convert. Using negative keywords makes that happen.

With the Christmas example above, an advertiser may look for search terms that are similar to their chosen keywords, but might cater to customers searching for a different product.

Someone might be looking for garden trees but not want Christmas trees, which would be a more popular search term during winter. What’s more, if a business doesn’t stock Christmas trees, they wouldn’t want budget wasted during that time of year.

Note: according to Google, negative keywords don’t match to close variants. So if you exclude a negative broad match keyword “Christmas trees”, you could still appear in a search for “Christmas tree”.

Negative keywords work differently way in Display and Video campaigns compared to Search. There’s also a limit of 5,000 negative keywords and, in some cases, your ad appears may contain excluded terms (this depends on your other keywords in your ad groups and your targeting methods).

Why are they important?

Whatever your campaign goals are, negative keywords are crucial to achieving them. Why? Because they cut down on unnecessary ad spend.

Here are 3 important uses:

1. Avoiding competitor brand terms

There’s a lot of debate around whether advertisers should or shouldn’t bid on competitor brand terms. If you decide against it, negative keywords can come in handy. You could also argue that you don’t want to be associated alongside certain brand terms so Adding potentially sensitive keywords to your list could save you money and branding issues.

2. Specific ad copy for specific audience

Say you have gendered sportswear campaigns. You might not want to display ads for men’s sportswear to people searching for women’s sportswear and vice versa. So in your men’s sportswear campaign, you could include negative keywords such as “women’s”, “ladies” and “female”.

3. Targeting search terms with a higher ROI

A key benefit of negative keywords is to reduce wasted ad spend but it can also amplify campaigns targeting high-coverting keywords.

An example of this would be to add terms like “free”, “low cost”, “cheap”, “reduced” and “discount” to your negative keyword list as users often look for cheaper alternatives for products.

Types of negative keywords

There are 3 main types of negative keywords:

1. Negative broad match
2. Phrase match
3. Exact match

The table below explains them in more detail:

How to build a negative keyword list

In Google Ads Editor 

Open Google Ads Editor, ensuring that you fetched recent changes and scroll down to the ‘Manage’ bar until you reach ‘Keywords and Targeting’. 

Opening up the tab will bring up a wide range of keyword and targeting options, but for this task we want to click on ‘Keywords, Negative’.

1. Click ‘Add Negative Keyword’
2. Choose what level you want to assign the negative keyword to. Ad group level will assign it to the ad group selected only, with Campaign level assigning them to the campaign of choice. 
3. After selecting the level you want to assign your negative keyword to, you will be able to add and edit the type of negative keyword you would like to add. You will need to select the match type. For example: If you don’t want your ads to show for the term ‘free’ then you would want to add this as a negative keyword. 
4. Continue adding in negative keywords.
5. Once finished make sure you click ‘Post’ to push your changes live to your account.

In the Adzooma platform

Creating negative keyword lists in the Adzooma platform is much simpler.

Log into the platform and navigate to the ‘Management’ page. 

1. Next to ‘Negative Keywords’, click ‘+’

2. Simply pop your negative keywords into the box, along with the relevant match type symbols and click save.

Your negative keywords will now appear in your negative keyword list!

How to find negative keywords

If you’re struggling to figure out what negative keywords you should use for your Google Ads campaign, consider the following:

1. Use lists of common negatives

Do a Google search and you’ll find a host of lists featuring common negative keywords.

What negatives you uses depends on your industry and campaign goals but some general eCommerce keywords include:

• Free
• Used
• Cheap
• Low cost
• Bargain
• Bargains
• Deal
• Deals
• Discount
• Discounts

2. Analyse your search terms report

The best Google Ads data is your own data so make sure to study your search terms report to identify ad spend leaks.

The search terms report shows the terms that people searched for to trigger your ads. This data can give ideas for negative keywords, particularly if you spot unrelated terms in the report.

But remember: negative keyword match types don’t match to variants so make sure you factor that in when you add new negatives to your list.

3. Use Google Autocomplete

When I type in “tree” I get the following from Google’s autocomplete search feature:

• trees
• treesize
• treesize tool
• trees for sale
• trees for small gardens
• trees for life
• trees for sale near me
• trees for sale nottingham
• trees in pots
• trees online

Some of those terms are relevant but others aren’t. Manual searches find this immediately but the bigger your campaign, the longer it takes. So you have options to automate this process with a keyword tool like Mangools KWFinder or you could use SEMrush or SEO PowerSuite to find similar suggestions.

Need help? Let Adzooma manage your negative keywords

Negatives can be positives with Adzooma, with the inclusion of our negative keywords feature. It’s a fantastic way to manage your budget, make better targeting decisions, and boost your return on investment.

You can now add, edit and view all negative keywords at campaign and ad group level within the platform. Simply log into your account and find negative keywords in your management screen.

But if you’re not an Adzooma customer yet, there’s never been a better time to join as our platform is free.

Join Adzooma today.

This is known as the customer lifetime value, and if you want to thrive you need to understand how to retain customer longevity and loyalty.

What is customer lifetime value?

Simply put, customer lifetime value, or CLV for short, is the measurement of how valuable a customer is to a business over the whole period of their cooperation, or relationship. Here are 4 factors to consider:

1. CLV takes into account the customers total worth to a company during their lifetime and is calculated for the entire relationship and not on a purchase-by-purchase basis alone.
2. It is a crucial metric to track when it comes to a customer experience program as it costs businesses more money to acquire new customers than it does to keep existing ones.
3. Increasing the value of your existing customers is, therefore, a great way to create and drive more growth, and companies that know their CLV can then develop strategies to retain existing customers, whilst attracting new ones.
4. CLV is intrinsically linked to business revenue and differs from other customer metrics such as the CSAT that measures customer satisfaction and the Net Promoter Score (NPS), which is used to measure customer loyalty.

When looking at the overall picture, the CLV metric is an indicator of the profit expected from a specific customer relationship, which then allows business owners to come up with an estimate of how much they are willing to invest in maintaining it to get good profit margins.

For example, suppose a customer’s CLV number equals £1,000. A business won’t want to spend more than that to keep the relationship going as it wouldn’t be a very profitable or beneficial decision.

How to calculate the Customer Lifetime Value

The formula to calculate CLV can be a bit tricky at first, especially if you are new to it.

First, you need to calculate the average purchase value and multiple it by the average purchase frequency rate. This will ultimately determine the customer’s value, which will then allow you to multiply by the customer’s average lifespan to give you your customer lifetime value.

Sounds complicated? Here’s a little step-by-step how-to guide to make the process a bit easier.

1. How to calculate the average purchase value

Divide your company’s total revenue for a specific period (most commonly a year) by the number of purchases made during the course of the same period.

2. How to calculate the average purchase frequency rate

Divide the total number of purchases by the number of customers who made purchases throughout that time.

3. How to calculate customer value

Multiply the average purchase frequency rate by the average purchase value.

4. Work out the average customer lifespan

Determine this figure by averaging the number of years a customer continues to make purchases from your business.

4. Finally, calculate the CLV

Multiply the average customer lifespan by the customer value to give you the estimated revenue generated for your business from an average customer, during the course of their relationship with you.

How to improve customer lifetime value

Of course, once you figure out the CLV, the next question is how to improve upon this figure to result in higher revenue and profit margins for your company.

Here are a few tips for nurturing the relationship with your customers, in turn boosting your CLV figures.

Reward your customers

Recognising and rewarding your best customers with special offers is a great way to nurture relationships with those who are loyal to your business. Create a loyalty program and marketing strategy that targets these customers specifically and offer extra services or goods when they make purchases with you such as access to select services, pre-released and exclusive products, free shipping or offers on exclusive benefits.

A loyalty program makes the customer experience more personal, creating an incentive for them to repeat their purchases and remain loyal to your company.

Improve and maintain good communication

Open and transparent communication between a business and customer strengthens the relationship. It creates a level of trust, making the company seem more ‘human.’ Customers appreciate companies who allow their voices and opinions to be heard.

Therefore, in today’s competitive climate, it is vital to proactively respond to all customers, address negative comments, low ratings and any other problems that they might be having. Once a customer knows that a brand is responsive and receptive to their issues, they are more likely to return as they are confident in the knowledge that they will be well taken care of.

Retargeting

It is essential not to forget about your customers once they have made that all-important first purchase. To improve CLV, it is vital to re-engage those who have already had an experience with your business and made a purchase, to remind them of the company and increase brand awareness.

Customers who have forgotten about the excellent experience they had with you may need that little nudge. That’s why products with a shelf-life can be extremely beneficial in your retargeting efforts due to time-sensitivity, which could lead to another quick purchase.

Focus on customer experience

Lastly, customer satisfaction should always be a priority, whether it is their first initial purchase, or they are a returning client. While customer experience is made up of a variety of factors, one thing that remains constant is that the connection between the brand and the customer has to exist in every instance.

This includes points of contact through each stage of the journey, whether that be purchases, customer service contact centres, store visits and even the customer’s exposure to advertising campaigns and social media.

Become customer-centric and improve their experience with a management programme that explicitly monitors your progress. These programmes involve a process of making vital changes that ultimately lead to long-lasting improvements in how customers feel towards your company, and in turn, improving CLV metrics exponentially.

Further resources

• A Guide To CRM: The Simple But Effective Way To Manage Your Customers
• Over 50% of Customers Will Buy From a Brand With a Strong Personality
• How to Harness The Voice of Your Customers
• Data Shows Customers Are Likely To Buy And Unfollow You For Political Statements

Conclusion

With the odds of acquiring and selling to a new customer between a relatively low 5-20% compared to a much higher 60-70% selling to an existing one, it’s apparent just how important customer lifetime value is to the continued success of a company. That is why it should be an area of focus for all companies in these difficult and trying times.

Not only will CLV attract and retain long-term customers who will become natural brand ambassadors and repeat purchasers, but it will also help to build a stable and successful business along the way.

On-page SEO is considered to be the most important and effective method of generating quality leads with solid technical SEO being the initial starting point to a well-optimised site. When important technical SEO practices are overlooked or poorly implemented, it can negatively affect your lead generation efforts. 

Let’s define technical SEO

Let’s begin by understanding what the term technical SEO actually means as it’s one of the core practices for lead generation and SEO.

Technical SEO is the process of making sure that a website is optimised to meet the specifications of modern search engines in order to improve organic rankings. The presence of certain technical characteristics like a secure connection, responsive design, or a fast page load times can lead to preferential treatment from the search engines.

Working with your web developer on basic technical optimisation can make a significant difference to successful lead generation and help improve the results of your other SEO campaigns. It’s important to focus on laying a strong technical foundation for a website to be fast, clear, and easy to find by search engine robots. This also conveniently leads to an improved user experience for your customers, creating a win-win situation for everyone.

Here are some of the common issues that can occur with technical SEO but could be easily fixed.

Identify and fix crawling and indexing errors

The first task you should undertake when fixing the technical SEO of a website is to run an audit to identify crawling and indexing errors that might be affecting the visibility of your website in search engines. Google Search Console provides an extensive report that helps to identify such errors.

A crawl and index error is any obstacle the search engine faces while trying to access web pages. These errors can be dangerous as they prevent the search engine from reading the content of your website and indexing its pages. Crawls errors can be broadly classified into two types; Site errors and URL errors.

Site errors

Site errors are critical as they show that the search engine, and therefore its users, are not able to access the website which means there is zero visibility to customers and no lead generation. The three main types of site errors reported during checkups are; DNS errors, Server errors, and robot failure. DNS errors can be resolved easily by contacting your domain name service provider to resolve any issues. Server errors, on the other hand, can be a bit more tricky as there are several types of server errors that can occur, usually the primary issue is that the server is taking too long to respond and Google’s request has timed out. The final error type can occur with reading robots.txt files, these errors that show that the search engines can not find and read the website’s robots.txt file. When this happens consult your web developer or triple check your robots.txt file for the line Disallow: / and remove it.

URL errors

These errors show that specific pages of the website are inaccessible or empty, this should be checked on a regular basis, so the error can be fixed as soon as possible. Some of the more familiar URL errors include:

• Soft 404s
• Not found
• Access denied
• Not followed
• Unauthorized (401)
• Some server (5xx) or DNS errors.

These can be found with URL inspection tools and the elimination of broken links and other issues can make your webpage more crawl-worthy, thus improving the indexing process.

A noindex tag, when associated with a URL, can be a reason behind the failure of the indexing of that page. Another commonly seen problem is a “redirect error”, this means that the URL is being redirected to an invalid page. Your web developer can work on these types of issues and resolve them fairly easily so that the pages can be indexed correctly.

Implement schema markup efficiently

The lack of structured data on a website can be distracting for search engines often resulting in lower ranking and invisibility for potential customers, despite other on-page and off-page SEO techniques being implemented correctly. Using Schema markup is the best way of communicating a website’s intent and content type with search engines. 

To implement schema markup correctly you should use it to highlight important elements of your website, such as those that have contact and address information, event listings, blogs, news articles etc. You (or your web developer) should then follow the guidelines for Schema Markup to generate structured data markup which gets included in your pages HTML to label and identify this important content. Once this has been done you should test the markup is correct using online validation tools.

Correct use of schema markup will equip your website for semantic search and also helps prepare your site to be ready for emerging developments such as voice search. For example, if your company Acme Ltd has implemented schema markup correctly on an events page and a user does a voice search for “When is the Acme Limited AGM event” the search engine will understand the context that there is an event on your website called “AGM” on the 12th December and return the correct result. 

The overall structure and hierarchy of your site also should be documented through XML and HTML sitemaps, a XML sitemap helps the search engine crawlers to analyse a website while a HTML sitemap can help guide your customers through your website.

Avoid duplicate content

Having multiple pages with similar content can create a problem for Google as well as other search engines to determine which page should rank. Including blocks of content across multiple pages that are similar can be considered as duplicate content, this can cause an issue with the organic page ranking.

Onsite duplication i.e. the occurrence of the same content on two or more unique URLs can be easily controlled by the site admin and your web development team by using scanning tools such as SiteLiner that can be used to speed up the process.

When you’re checking for duplicate content be mindful in case a third party has republished your website’s content with your approval or you’ve decided to republish useful information sourced from third-party content. The duplication can damage your rankings and it can take quite a while to fix these problems. Your website’s unique content is important not just for search engines but also for attracting organic leads.

Finally, make your website mobile-friendly

Using technical SEO correctly can be really easy when you understand the basics. The speed of your website when being used on a mobile device can change your ranking significantly. Look at your site’s performance on different devices, implement accelerated mobile pages, and improve the indexability of the website for organic traffic. 

Having a mobile-friendly website not only improves your search engine ranking but also improves your customer’s user experience as the majority of internet users today will access most websites through their mobile devices.

For more help with your SEO, check out Adzooma’s SEO Performance Report. It analyzes your website and identifies immediate actions you can take to improve. You’ll receive a detailed breakdown of your performance into 4 key areas: keyword performance, onsite SEO, page speed and backlinks.

The report is available to all Adzooma users, try the basic version for free to get a taste of what this report can offer. Not an Adzooma user? Sign up for free, here.

In conclusion, it is important to review the technical aspects of SEO regularly to ensure the performance and rankings of your website remains good. Avoid internal or external linking errors, keep an eye out for broken links and non-canonical URLs, avoid cannibalisation of keywords in your content, and look after on-page and off-page SEO campaigns for improved organic traffic and lead generation.