【自分用】Strategic Web Design
Analytics
<How Analytics Works>
<Metrics>
<KPI (Key Performance Indicators)>
<Making Better Decisions with Analytics>
<Attribution>
<Google Analytics>
Paid Search Marketing
Coｍpanies advertising on search engines only have to pay for ads going to people who have professed a real and current interest in the product offered by the advertiser.
<Choosing Search Targets>
Advertisers select when to show their ad based on 1) the search phrase entered by the searcher and 2) other characteristics of the search, such as the searcher's location, a device used, time of day, etc.
Keyword Selection
A company wishing to advertise on a search engine provides a list of keywords to the search engine. The company's ads will only show uo on the SERP when the search phrase entered by the customer matches one of the keywords on the company 's list. But the searched phrase does not have to be a letter-for-letter of a keyword to activate an ad. (space, misspelled, etc)
On the other hand, every company does not want to show ads when searced phrases are entererd by a person who did not intend to take a look at his/her products or is not really interested in its products, because it could lead to waste of money. Search engines provide a variety of matche types for advertisers to specify the searches they wish to target.
Exact Match: A search phrase will match an exat match keyword if the search is a close varient of the keyword. A close varient includes misspellings, abbereviations, and even synonyms. To use exact match for a keyword, the advertiser places brackets around [a keyword].
e.g. "NIKE running shoes"
Pros: The advertiser will waste little to no money advertising to searchers that are not interested in the advertiser's products.
Cons: The advertiser is likely to miss out on valuable advertising placements when searchers search for the advertiser's product using an unanticipated variation.
Broad Match: Broad match directs Google to show the ad to any search that 'broadly' matches that keyword.
e.g. "best running shoes"
Pros: Breadth. Advertisers are not likely to miss out on valuable advertising opportunities beause their ad will show up for anyone doing a search relevant to their products.
Cons: Ads are likely to show up for searches in which the searcher had no intention of purchasing the advertiser's products.
Phrase Match: This instracts Google to show ads on searches that include the keyword, close variants, or other terms with a similar meaning. To use phrase match, an advertiser puts quotaion marks around "a keyword".
e.g. "how to learn Spanish in Vancouver"
Pros: Phrase match can also include additional search words that do not match the keyword.
Cons: These ads may be shown to searchers who did not intent to search its products due to a wide range of relevant keywords.
Negative Keywords
It can often be helpful to instract the search engine where not to display an ad. Once an advertiser set up a certain keyword that the advertiser does not want to show for some reason, as a negative keyword, it will not show up on SERP.
Other Selection Factors
Geography: Search engines allow advertisers to specify the geographic regions they wish to target with their ads. It also helps them allocate more ad budget effectively to those geographies
Device Type: If mobile ads prove less profitable than desktop ads, advertiser should pay less for ads on mobile phones.
Timing: Many businesses find that searches vary throughout the day, not only in volume but also in quality. For example, an enterprise software company might find that serious potential customers do searcches between regular business hours, so searches at night or on weekends are not profitable. Timing is especially important for ads on mobile devices because they tend to be used with local intent, like "restaurant near me" on a device at 12:15 p.m., it is likely that she is looking for a place to eat lunch, so the likely conversion rate on this search is very high.
Language: Advertisers should remember that not everyone within a particular geography always speaks the same language.
Keyword Research
Search For Yourself: Imagine being in a particular product of a potential customer.
Competitive Research: Using keyword research tools, input their URL to estimate what those competitors pay per click to advertise on those keywords. One can also gain insights into what other keywords they have selected as relevant places to advertise, and determine if competing on those same keywords is possible. As some examples, SpyFu.com, SEMRush.com, and KeywordSpy.com are tools that can be used for online advertising competitive research.
Google Keyword Planner: Those above tools are costly, so advertiser with a lower budget can use Google's Keyword Planner tool, which is free.
Searcher Intent: Think about what the searcher wants and what your website provides.
Average Monthly Searches: These data can be used to project how many impressions and clicks an add can acquire in any given month.
Level of Competition: High-competition keywords mean that relative to other keywords, a higher number of advertisers bid on that keyword. Keywords with high search volume and low competition are ideal for getting the most traffic for the least amount of money. Keywords with low search volume and high competition tend to send less traffic and cost more money per click, but sometimes the high CPC is justified because these keywords convert at higer rates.
Suggested Bid: Using historical data, Google looks at what other advertisers are paying per click to advertise on that keyword. Advertisers use this information to determine how much they can expect to pay per click to advertise on specific keywords. Because of the unknown variables of each advertiser, it is not the exact amount that each advertiser will pay, but it does provide a close estimate.
Branded Keywords
As an actual example, think about Best Buy. A potential customer enters their brand name in the search bar. Best Buy has chosen to purchase ads on this keyword, which means they might have to pay for this click when the click would likely be free if they chose not to advertise because all of the organic listings are also for bestbuy.com.
Many digital marketers believe Best Buy should continue to purchase search ads in this situation.
First, if Best Buy does not advertise on its own brand name, competitors may start advertising more aggresively on its brand name and steal Best Buy's customers.
Second, ads on a company's brand name are inexpensive (the reason for the lower price tag for brand searches has to do with the ad's quality score)
Third, real estate on the SERP is valuable, and buying ads allows a company to take up more space on the SERP.
However, other digital marketers believe search ads on brand keywords waste money for some reasons (depending on situations). The most important thing for digital marketers is that if a digital marketer is unsure as to whether paying for ads on branded keywords is effective, he or she should run an experiment.
<Writing Ad Copy>
A search ad's copy has;
Final URL
Headlines: up to 15, with the 30-character limit
Display path, with the 15-character limit
Description(s) (Meta description): up to 4, with the 90-character limit
Ad extensions: It is labeled "Select campaign settings" in Google Ads. SMART (specific, measurement, achivement, relevant, timeliness) is an important factor. Advertisers do not have the ability to control when and which ad extensions appear, but each advertiser does have the ability to opt in to each ad extension individually. Other ad extensions include the following;
Location extensions
Location
Affiliate location: third party retailers
Printable coupons
Shopping star review extensions
Reservation entensions
Call extensions
Message
Sitelink
Structured snippet: Highlighting specific aspects of a product or service. It will increase the ad relevancy, helping users to see quickly the most important details, it can result in boosting CTR.
Price
Review
App
Responsive search ads that Google has its control, became the default ad type in 2021, which makes advertisers frustrated. The upside of responsive ads is that they automatically institute an A/B/n test to determine the optimum ad copy. The downside of them is that A/B/n tests require large amounts of data, so for lower-volume advertisers, many weeks or months may pass before the data can definitively indentify which headlines and descriptions generate more interest from searchers.
Other Types of PPC Ads in SERP
Shopping Ads: They display product images and prices instead of just text.
Google Maps Ads: Text ads can be displayed when someone is searching on Google Maps
Call-only Ads: Call extensions were already mentioned, and these are different form call-only ads. A call extension is an additional line appended to a usual search ad that allows users to click to place a phone call.
Dynamic Search Ads: Google will "pull" informaion about the advertiser's products from its website and show the advertiser's ads on searches Google deems are relevant. These ads are only recommended for advertisers with enough budget to experiment with the ads first to determine whether thay are profitable.
Remarketing Lists for Search Ads (RLSA): Customers have already visited an advertiser. The advertiser would like to make sure that its ad shows up prominently when this previous non-converter does another search for a proudct sold by the advertiser. Remarketing lists allow advertisers to create ad campaigns specifically for searchers who have previously visited their website.
Metasearch Ads: Especially for flight and hotel searches, Google can provide booking information directly to the searcher.
Writing Effective Copy
Three ways;
Keywords for relevance: CTRs tend to improve when the keyword being searched is in the ad. If the keyword is found in the description, that keyword will be bolded, attracting the searcher's attention.
UVP (Unique Value Proposition): Ads must communicate something to the searcher to indicate that what the site has is superior to the other sites.
CTA (Call to Action): A CTA might be the last nudge that is needed to push the searcher over the edge and earn the advertiser a click. A strong CTA is considered good practice for seach ads, but CTAs have declined in prominence over the past several years, which indicates that a CTA may no longer be crucial for success.
<Buying Ad Space>
Ad Rank: Search engines sell keyword ad space using an automated auction platform. In simplistic terms, advertisers place a bid on a keyword (instruct the search engine the maximum amount they are willing to pay for a click from a searcher who has searched for that keyword), and the winning bid gets the best ad location for searches on that keyword.
The Ad Rank of each advertiser is also determined by the ad's Quality Score, as shown below.
Quality Scores: "a measurement of how relevant your ads, keywords, and landing page are to a person seeing your ad. Higher Quality Scores can lead to lower prices and better ad positions." The main criterias are;
Expected CTR: If an ad is well written and seems to generate more clicks compared to the other advertisers, Google is likely to reward it with a better ad position.
Ad relevance: The keywords an advertiser is bidding on should be used in the ad and on the landing page (the Final URL).
Landing page experience: If bounces occur frequently for people who click on an ad, this negative signal could affect the company's Ad Rank.
Bidding
When someone does a search that triggers an advertiser's keyword, the bid amount for that keyword is multiplied by the advertiser's Quality Score.
Instead of setting a CPC bid, advertisers can also specify a CPA (Cost Per Action) bid for each keyword, which is the amount the advertiser is willing to pay for each conversion. By default, advertisers are encouraged to adopt the automated bid strategy to 'Maximize Conversions'. As other options, there are 'Maximize conversion value', 'Maximize clicks', or 'Maximize impression share'.
Automated bidding: It offers many advantages over manual bidding. First, Google's intimate knowledge of keyword performance characteristics will be applied to your campaigns. For example, Google may know from historical data that people who search for 'jobe wakeboard' convert at twice the rate as people who search for 'obrien wakeboard'. Knowing this, Google will set your bid on the former keyword so that you will be more likely to attract this more valuable traffic. Automated bidding prevents some common errors that manual bidders often commit. However, advertisers naturally learn less about the search market. Also, the promised improvements require large quantities of data. Months may pass before Google has enough data to even start improving your campaign's performance or before it can calibrate its bids to a performance level you might have reached just by applying your own inferences about the kinds of searches that are more likely to come from serious buyers. Less of control and price fluctuation can happen.
Manual Bidding: Several months might pass before you would be able to recognize this difference in conversion propensity. Performance will continually improve as Google learns which keywords and user characteristics lead to a higher conversion likelihood. It allows advertisers to have control of how and where to show up their ads, and experience and learn how it works.
<Analyzing Results>
CTRs between 1% and 4% are typical, though an advertiser should be constantly striving to increase the CTR no matter what the current CTR is.
ROAS (Retrun on Advertising Spend): Return on ad spend is an important metric. The formula for calculating ROAS is;
(Total Profit/Total Adspend) *100 = ROAS
If the ROAS is 300%, it means the advertiser earned $3 in profit for every $1 spent on advertising.
CPA (Cost per Action): An action is typically considered a completed sale for a retail site, or a lead generated for a lead generation site. CPA determines how much it costs, on average, to reach a site's desired conversion.
Total amount of adspend/Total numbers of sales completed (or leads generated) = CPA
"Target CPA" refers to how much adspend an advertiser can spend on search ads for one conversion.
Search Query Reports
It shows some of the searches that resulted in an ad click, and where Google chose to show an ad. Sometimes keywords will often show up that don't make sense, and advertiser would rather not let Google show his ad on that keyword again. It enables them to add some unrelated keywords to negative keyword list.
Mobile Performance
Customer search behavior and purchase behavior often vary dramatically across devices, so it is important to break out all search reports separately for desktop, tablet, and mobile devices. In general, most digital marketers find that their ads perform worse on mobile than desktop computers. There may be many reasons for inferior performance on mobile devices, and the correct response to low-performing on mobile ads depends on the reason for the low performance, so it is important to make a proper diagnosis.
Poor Mobile Optimization
Even if all web page content renders properly on a mobile device, the main call to action and purchase button may show up below the fold. This would decrease conversions despite the site being technically mobile optimized. All websites should ensure that the mobile experience of all web pages is optimized.
Low Purchase Intent
People tend to do searches on whichever device is handly at the time they think of doing the search. A mobile device is the most handy, so people doing product research or searching for basic information often conduct such searches on mobile devices. Even though a mobile website is amazing, it is not likely to produce a high conversion rate from searchers who had no intention of making a purchase in the first place. In this case, it makes sense to adjust mobile bids to be lower so less money is wasted on mobile searchers who are unlikely to convert.
Alternative Mobile Conversion
Someone who didn't make a conversion on his phone might later move to their desktop computer to complete a transaction, or he may locate the nearest store to make the purchase in person. In this case, it was the mobile search that led to the purchase, but the mobile search report would not show the profit that the mobile searches were producing. For a time it seemed that sophisticated tracking algorithms would be able to connect cross-device purchases and mobile-to-store purchases and provide advertisers with accurate accounting of such behavior, but the privacy concerns that led to the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) have stalled such efforts.
<Google Ads Account Structure>
Properly managing their Ads account organization is important.
Google Ads Account is composed 5 level of the accounts.
Account: At the account level, advertisers add their credit card information to pay for all of thier clicks. Each time they log in to their accounts, they can get a performance overview and manage each of thier campaigns. An account can have up to 25 campaigns.
Campaign: By clicking into an individual campaign, and then on the settings tab, advertisers can manage the following campaign settings;
Name: It helps them remember the promotions, keywords, ads, and landing pages associated with the campaign.
Campaign Type: It allows advertisers to choose which of Google's advertising networks they are trying to reach. Device, Location, and Language Targeting are made at the campaign level. Also, Daily Budget and Bid Strategy are set up at this level. Lastly, Ad Extensions is chosen where and when to show a company's ad extensions by Google at the campaign level.
Search network only: This allows advertisers' text ads to display on the keywords they target in Google SERPs and other websites that use Google's search engine results, like AOL.com and Ask.com.
Display network only: This campaign type is for running text and banner ads across Google's ad network, an enormous list of websites that have given Google permission to run Google's ads on thier site. With this campaign type, a company's ads are never shown in Google SERPs.
Search network with display select: This allows text ads to display on the keywords a company selects in Google SERPs, other search sites that use Google's search engine results, and websites that display text and bannerr ads distributed by Google that have content Google deems relevant to the company's ad.
Shopping: This campaign type allows an advertiser to separately manage its Google Shopping Ads.
※Google does not allow the advertiser to copy over the ads and keywords from the previous campaign.
Each campaign can contain multiple ad groups.
Ad Group: It is a collection of ads within a campaign that crresponds to a group of related keywords. The advertiser selects keywords at the Ad Group level.
Ads: By default, advertisers will set up a responsive search ad, which automatically initiates a randomized test to determine the optimum ad composition.
Keyword: It is a specific word, or combination of words, used to target your ads to potential customers. When a user searches on your keyword, your ad might be shown. Keyword organization can only be managed at the ad-group level.
BingAds
Due to the size and reach of Google's paid search ads, taking the time to discuss Google Ads account structure specifically has been worthwhile. Running ads on Yahoo and Bing's search engines through the BingAds platform is very similar to Google Ads.
Google owns the lion's share of searches, but that doesn't mean a BingAds account can't help further a company's success or generate large volumes of trafifc. The demographic makeup of Bing and Yahoo users is different from Google users.
Display Advertising
<Understanding Display Networks>
Display Network
Because it is nearly impossible for an advertiser to reach out to each dozens of websites via emai or over the phone to ask them if they will allow it to run its ads on their site, there is a certain system which enables both an advertiser and publisher to get together and coordinate ads, which is called Display Network.
Display Network;
dictates ad sizes that can be displayed on publisher websites.
coordinates which ads are displayed on which websites at which time.
collects payment from advertisers and pay publishers their portion of the advertising revenue.
reports the ad performance metrics to the advertisers.
only has to coordinate with the ad network rather than hundreds of advertisers.
Publishers;
must create an account with the display ad network, and its website must fit the specifications dictated by the ad network, including correctly sized spaces set aside for advertisements.
incorporates code provided by the ad network that enables the network to load ads into the allocated ad space every time and a web page loads.
are paid a percentage of the revenue the display ad network charges advertisers.
Advertisers;
create and upload ads that meet the specifications of the display ad network.
manage their ad budgets on the display ad platform provided by the display ad network.
set parameters regarding the types of internet users they want to see their ads
receive reports on where their ads were displayed.
earn traffic to their website from these diplayed ads.
only has to coordinate the ads with one ad network.
Paying for Ads
1) Who gets to advertise in the same space
2) How much the advertiser shoud pay to advertise there
→To determine which an ad shows up the position, the ad network uses a bidding system.
What it differs from search ad bidding is that display advertisers have multiple bidding formats from which to choose. That is, display advertisers can pay CPC, CPM (cost-per-mile, or cost per thousand impressions), or CPA.
※To use CPA bidding, a website must have conversion tracking activated in its web analytics package so that the ad network can verify the number of conversions occuring on the website.
Ad networks track the CTRs of advertisers so they can convert CPC bids into CPM bids. For instance,
Given info: Ad 2 earned one click every 500 impressions.
Formula:
CPC = CPM / CTR *100
<Targeting the Right Audience>
Ad Targeting
Factors that display ads can fail to influence users;
The consumer was interested in the website content and did not notice the display ad.
The consumer only read the first two paragraphs of the article, and did not scroll down to where the as was displayed.
The consumer was not interested in the advertised product.
The consumer was not interested in the advertised product at that time.
The consumer was not interested in the advertised product offer.
The consumer was in the Interest Stage of the AIDA model, so the ad served to move the consumer along this journey for a future purchase, but not an immediate one.
The consumer clicked on the ad, but the landing page was poorly designed, so he/she did not convert.
Selecting Display Targets on Google Ads
A recent change in the Google Ads platform is that display advertisers do not even need to set ad targets at all. Google will analyze the content on a landing page and then 1) set initial ad targets whose interests seem to align with the landing page content as well as 2) continually update these targets based on the ad performance.
※Advertisers who believe they understand their target market can click on "Add targeting" to set their own initial ad targets.
Advertisers can target their ads based on following methods;
audience segments: typically more effective
Who they are
Affinity: What their interests and hobits are
In-market or Life events targeting: What they are actively researching or planning
Remarketing: How they have interacted with your business
※Google has announced to discontinue third-party cookies by 2024 for users' privacy reasons.Your combined audience segments: It allows advertisers to combine custom segments. To expand targeting (OR), to narrow down the targeting (AND), or to exclude certain segments (NOT).
Your custom audience segments: It allow advertisers to create a target segment and save it for future campaigns.
Demographics: age, gender, income, etc.. but limited
keywords
topics
placements
Mobile Display Ads
Some mobile applications and websites are created with the express purpose of maximizing fat-finger ad clicks - accidental clicks on display ads that occur because website naviation is located right next to a display ad. It can lead to a bounce rate of 90% and a conversion rate of 0%. Clearly, mobile display ads are not profitable for an advertiser seeing there results.
What should they do in that situation?
deselect mobile devices
adjust the bid amount by a percentage.
For example, if the advertiser bids $2 CPC, he or she can set the mobile bid to -70%, so the bid will only be $0.60 for mobile devices.
Note: Mobile display ads can cause cross-device sales, which means that mobile display ads may not convert on the mobile device but may convert later on another device, or complete a purchase in the phsical store.
<Banner Ad Design>
Attract attention: Attract visitors' attention away from the main content on the web page.
Communicate a value proposition: It is related to UVP, and you should prove why this prodcut is worth of purchasing.
Invite action: Feature a CTA, an explicit invitaion to click the ad.
<Retargeting>
Retargeting ads are shown to internet users who have previously visited the advertiser's website. Most advertisers find retargeting ads to be very profitable. Retargeting ads are made possible by cookies. The reason the Google Display Network was able to show certain company's website ad on a publisher homepage was because it observed the cookie from that certain company on that user's browser. This kind of cookie is called a third party cookie.
Generic Retargeting Ads
Dynamic Retargeting Ads
Interestingly, dynamic retargeting ads is less effective than generic retargeting ads. (as shown below)
However, once after consumers have visited a review website, dynamic retargeting ads are more effective than generic retargeting ads.
<Optimizing Banner Ads>
A major advantage of online display advertsing is the fact that the effectiveness of the ads can be directly measured by Display Ads Network who reports of where those ads showed up and how many clicks and how much revenue they generated. The calculation of revenue in turn makes the ROAS calculation (Retrun on Ad Spend) very simple.
Also, A/B tesitng is a practice a company should be using constantly with display ads. It involves creating two versions of an ad, showing both at random across the ad network, and allowing the numbers to determine which ad is more effective.
Best: Context matching without being too intrusive
<Consistent Messaging>
As a company plans ad campaigns and prepares content for its website, its messaging must be in line with the messaging in its site. No matter where people interact with a brand, online or offline, in the car or at the gym, the brand message must stay consistent.
Tout the same value propositions.
Use similar calls to action.
Enact the same design elements (color scheme, characters, fonts, imagery, etc.)