Article by Susan Wenograd Modified broad match will be sunset, with phrase match taking over. Here's what this means for advertisers and how queries match to keywords. Google announced today what is potentially a large change for certain paid search managers: the broad match modified version of keywords will be going away. This change will start rolling out in two weeks. What’s Happening to Broad Match Modified? Phrase match will now expand to cover broad match modified insta

Article by Josh McCoy. A year-end audit is always a good idea. You will gain insight into improvements that need to be made. Here's how to do it right. As much as it didn’t seem possible, we’ve made it to the end of 2020. It’s been quite a “different” year for many of us as search marketers. Interesting challenges presented themselves with shrunken budgets for many, or even altered tactics to see success during this year’s darkest days. For a fortunate few, business actually

Article by Corey Morris. Make sure your PPC campaigns are set up for success. Learn the top factors that can hold back paid search performance and how to address them. Are your PPC campaigns performing at the highest level possible? Maybe. Or maybe not. It doesn’t matter what type of company you work with, their industry, or their size. There are many specific mistakes that impact your PPC success. This article will highlight nine such mistakes. Some of these PPC mistakes obv

Article by Jonathan Kagan. Relying on older PPC bid strategies and concepts may do more harm than good. Here are outdated approaches to avoid and some alternatives to try instead. You know those good old paid search strategies – the ones we have always relied on, feel evergreen, and will never “go the way of Old Yeller”? Well, the reality is, the bid strategies from as recent as 2018 often struggle to still remain valuable, cutting edge, and tip-top shape for today’s marketer

Article by Matt Southern. Google is expanding free shopping ads to more countries starting in mid-October. Google is making shopping ads free in more countries following the rollout of free shopping ads in the US earlier this year. Retailers will soon be able to run free listings in the Shopping tab across Europe, Asia, and Latin America. The change is scheduled to take effect by mid-October. Google Shopping listings are free in the United States as of this past April. The de

Ginny Marvin reports. The impact will depend on what "significant" means, but advertisers are likely to lose visibility into at least some of the queries they pay for. Google has begun alerting advertisers that it will soon stop showing search queries that triggered their ads when there is not “significant” data. “We are updating the search terms report to only include terms that were searched by a significant number of users. As a result you may see fewer terms in your repor

Spotting the COVID-19 Impact with SEMrush Data According to Olga Andrienko, the COVID-19 pandemic has undoubtedly had a significant effect on digital marketing trends this year. Its full impact is yet to be seen, but businesses have been forced to adapt to the changing circumstances on a weekly or even daily basis. At SEMrush, we have collected and analyzed recent data from over 2,000 of the world’s most visited ecommerce websites across multiple categories, including Fashion

Following the significant move of bringing free product listings to Google’s Shopping tab results in April, Google is starting to extend them into the main Search results, Ginny Marvin reports. The company announced Monday that the product listings in Search knowledge panels will now all be organic and included in Surfaces across Google inventory. “We wanted to make sure that as consumers make a dramatic shift to e-commerce that we’re doing everything we can to make it easy f

Brie E Anderson writes in her article that UTM codes can be extremely beneficial for tracking the success of your campaigns. Learn about them and their abilities in this guide. Have you ever been asked to add a random string of code to the end of your links? If so, it’s likely because you were working with an analytical nerd such as myself and they wanted to track traffic from whatever campaign or content you were publishing. That seems important, right? A Quick Background on

Thinking of diving into Facebook ads? Wondering what the common pitfalls are? In this article, you’ll discover three important considerations when starting your first Facebook ad campaign. #1: Commit to a Facebook Funnel Implementation All successful marketing starts with a clear strategy and Facebook advertising is no exception. With a strategy built around your available audience assets, you can execute campaigns that will deliver the best results for your business in the f

I think we can all agree that it’s been a crazy couple of weeks, courtesy of COVID-19. Every day, we face a new reality, adjusting the way we live and work, walking the line between precaution and panic. Tensions rise along with the number of Coronavirus cases reported in the news. We stock up on groceries, make sure that our loved ones are safe, and overhaul our daily routines. We follow all the guidelines and hope to settle into a new normal. And that’s when entirely new fe

There are 4 key differences between the Google and Bing Ads so use this pre- and post-import checklist to make sure everything works correctly. The survey polled over 500 participants aged 25–60. You’ve spent a lot of time creating and optimizing your search campaigns. Endless hours in your Google Ads account optimizing account structure, optimizing bidding strategies and rules, adjusting your audiences and targeting, writing and rewriting ad copy. What about your Microsoft A

In retail and ecommerce, you have seconds (and that may even be generous) to get a qualified searcher with high purchase intent to bite on your paid search ad or simply gloss over it. Seemingly small details in your copy can make all the difference. What follows certainly isn’t an exhaustive list, but here are seven important details that can give your retail and ecommerce PPC campaigns an edge over your competition. 1. Understanding How the Headlines Work Google and Bing bot

Google confirmed it’s rolling out lead form ad extensions in the coming weeks, a feature that was recently spotted in testing. As we reported two weeks ago, Google has been testing ad extensions that have the ability to capture leads. After tapping a call-to-action button, users can quickly submit a form which is pre-populated with the contact information from their Google account. “Lead form extensions capture interest when potential customers are searching for your company,

Google Ads is rolling out seasonality adjustments for smart bidding for search and display campaigns. Smart bidding strategies set bids automatically to help advertisers improve the performance of their Google Ads campaigns. Smart bidding is already designed to take seasonality into account, but sometimes there are occasions outside of regular seasonality patterns when an advertiser may want to spend more on ads. For example, the launch of a new product is an occasion where c

Local PPC is near and dear to my heart says Navah Hopkins: helping members of the community profit by contributing to their communities is both satisfying and scalable. From SMBs driving leads to their owner-operated shop to a national brand channeling the trends of an individual location, and everything in between, there are decidedly right and wrong ways to leverage a PPC budget. Here are my top 10 ways to win at local PPC. 1. Claim Your Local Listings! Google My Business (

Article by Matt Lawson. When to switch to standard delivery in Google Ads (hint: you should have switched yesterday)​ Long thought to be an easy, one-click optimization, accelerated delivery might be doing more harm than good (if it’s doing anything at all). Here's why that is and what you should do about it. In the world of Google Ads, there’s a choice for each and every campaign’s ad delivery method: standard or accelerated. Do you want to spend your budget evenly over time

Article by Ginny Marvin. A look back at how Google has treated ads in search results, from blue shading to the latest version of today. This article has been updated to reflect the latest ad labeling change. Google rolled out a new treatment for labeling text ads in mobile search results in May. What makes this change different than past updates to ad labeling is that it came as part of a broader mobile search redesign that also introduced favicons for organic listings. The l

They recognized the logic – but many had strong criticisms. Over the weekend, Google surveyed small business owners about their appetite to pay monthly subscription fees for a number of potential Google My Business (GMB) enhanced features and services. Some of the suggested offerings included request a quote, automated review/message responses, booking buttons, remove ads from a profile, Google search results placement, Google Guarantee, verified reviews and several others. “

What is PPC? How does it work? And, most importantly, how can you make it work for you? This chapter will introduce you to everything you need to know about the exciting world of paid search marketing: keywords, ads, budgets and bids, ad rank, targeting, and conversions. Let’s kick things off with the basics. What Is PPC? Pay-per-click (PPC) is an advertising model that lets marketers place ads on an ad platform and pay the host of that platform every time their ad is clicked