If you take a look at the current digital marketing landscape, YouTube ads are amongst the most underutilized ad formats. This is because producing compelling, high-quality video content can seem like a challenge, especially to small-business owners.

However, once you know how to use YouTube ads, they can really help in the growth of your business.

As per the latest statistics, YouTube has more than 2 billion active users. Also, more than one-fourth of the world's population uses this popular social media platform in a month. So, the power of YouTube ads is something that should not be overlooked.

Now, you may wonder how you can use YouTube ads to increase sales or improve brand awareness? How to advertise your business on YouTube? Don't worry, as we have got you covered. Refer to our guide on how to use YouTube ads for business growth:

Types of YouTube Ads

First, let's take a look at the different types of YouTube ads. You may be aware of YouTube ad types if you have been fine-tuning your YouTube marketing strategy. But if not, don't worry! We will walk you through the main types of YouTube ads. Here's a closer look:

1. Skippable In-Stream Video Ads

Skippable in-stream video ads play before or during a video (pre-roll or mid-roll). One of their notable features is that the viewer has the option to skip them after the first 5 seconds. If the viewer decides to keep watching past the first 5 seconds, only then the advertiser has to pay. Your ad needs to be at least 12 seconds and a maximum of 6 minutes in length (we recommend somewhere under 3 minutes).

It is important to know that you only have to pay when a viewer watches the first 30 seconds, or the entire ad, or if they interact with your video ad by clicking (whatever takes place first).

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Note: The skippable in-stream ad is a variation of the TrueView ad. YouTube uses the term TrueView for the payment type where you only pay money for an ad impression when a viewer chooses to watch it.

2. Non-Skippable In-Stream Video Ads

If the statistics are to be believed, 76% of people say that they automatically skip ads. Keeping this in mind, some advertisers decide to run mid-roll and pre-roll ads that can't be skipped. This is when they use Non-Skippable in-stream video ads.

Use these ads if you want to increase brand awareness significantly, and you are sure that your creative approach is strong enough to grab eyeballs for a complete 15 seconds.

Bumper Ads

These ads are a subspecies of non-skippable in-stream ads. The difference between bumper ads and traditional non-skippable in-stream ads is the duration. Bumper ads are expected to be less than 6 seconds. These ads show up as pre-roll, mid-roll, or post-roll, and are well-suited for outreach and awareness campaigns. A bumper ad provides you with many ways to portray your brand in just a few seconds.

Given the smaller time duration of a bumper ad, try to show something memorable to the viewer in this ad.

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3. Discovery Ads

A discovery ad includes a thumbnail and three lines of text. When an interested person clicks on it, they are directed to your YouTube channel or video page. This ad type actually comes up alongside the organic search results. If your video appears more relevant as compared to organic results, people can decide to watch it instead.

Note: Discovery ad is another type of TrueView video ad because individuals must actively choose to watch this ad.

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How to Choose a YouTube Ad Type For Your Business?

Now that you know the different types of YouTube ads, it is time to know which type of YouTube ads is right for your business. Let's begin:

1. Non-Skippable Ads for Brand Awareness

Brand awareness means maximizing your brand's visibility. It paves the way for effective lead generation. Non-skippable ads work best to raise awareness for your business. These types of ads can appear post-roll, mid-roll, or pre-roll.

2. Bumper Ads for Message Reinforcement

Use bumper ads if you already have established an audience through digital media and want to announce something or get a message out to your audience.

Remember, in the case of bumper ads, you don't really want to educate your target audience or do much in terms of storytelling. You just need to hype a new service or product. For instance, the launch of a new phone of your brand.

3. Skippable In-Stream Ads for Lead Generation

You should use skippable in-stream ads for lead generation. Let's discuss an example to know why you should do so. A company called Monday.com uses skippable in-stream ads for the purpose of lead generation. Check out the image below:

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On the left, you can see the length of the ad. On the right, you can view the 5-second countdown to when the user can skip this ad. Meanwhile, the company's sign-up CTA is displayed in a companion banner (at the top-right). It is also shown in a video overlay (at the bottom-left). Even if a viewer clicks on skip, the companion banner will still stay there.

4. Video Discovery Ads For Brand Consideration

As we mentioned before, discovery ads come up alongside organic search results. For instance, you can see this ad at the top of the YouTube search results of a viewer.

When a viewer clicks on your discovery ad, they will be sent to your YouTube channel to watch the video ad. This helps you provide the viewers a closer look at your brand. Thus, video discovery ads work as an excellent brand consideration tool.

Tip: Before creating a YouTube ad, analyze your competitors' content and see how you can stand out in the industry. In the end, produce an ad that aligns with your marketing efforts, values, and brand image.

Optimizing Your YouTube Channel

As it is crucial to create an excellent first impression, it’s important to optimize your YouTube channel. Add business name, company logo, contact information, your official website’s link, and social media links. In the “About” section, write a brief description of your business your services, products, special offers, and other significant details.

How To Create A YouTube Ad For Your Business?

Once you understand the different types of YouTube ads, you would want to know how to create your first YouTube ad. Here is a step-by-step tutorial for it:

1. Upload Video

Log into the YouTube account for your brand and select the camcorder icon on the top-right corner. Then, select “Upload Video.” After this, you will be directed to the upload window. Upload your video here. Ensure you fill in details such as the description, title, and tag information.

2. Create Campaign

Select ‘New Campaign” after you sign in to your Google Ads account. You will see an option to select a campaign goal. For now, you can select “create a campaign without a goal’s guidance.”

Next, you will have to choose a campaign type (either “Display” or “Video” which you can choose according to your objectives). For our purposes, we will concentrate on the “Video” option.

Next, you will have to choose a campaign subtype. Choose the option you find the most appropriate and then select “Continue.”

3. Configure Campaign

After you create your campaign, you need to configure it in the right way. Begin by giving your campaign a name. Then, confirm things such as your bid strategy, campaign duration, and ad budget. Also confirm your locations, languages, and networks.

You will also find content exclusions in this section. This determines where your YouTube ad will be shown. Make the necessary selections here. Also, you can exclude some types of content and labels here if you want to.

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4. Target Your Audience

At the time of targeting your audience, begin by defining information such as gender, age, household income, and parental status.

Use topics, placements, and keywords to narrow down your targeting even further.

5. Finalize Your YouTube Ad

Now, set your maximum bid. Find your video in the “Create your video ad” section and select the right video ad format. Once you have done this, fill in the sections called “Final URL” and “Display URL.” You can also include your headline and call-to-action here.

Next, you can upload your own companion banner or auto-generate one. Once ready, select “Create Campaign,” and you are done!

Measuring The Success Of Your YouTube Ad

When you decide to assess your YouTube ad results, you get to know the weaknesses and strengths of your YouTube ad campaign.

A thing you should know is that YouTube ads automatically track a lot of metrics for you. You get access to engaged views data, watch time, etc. When you are new to Youtube ads, this information can seem overwhelming. So, we recommend you concentrate on the view rate for skippable ads. This serves as your true engagement rate because it determines how well you can turn your ad viewers into prospects who are interested.

For non-skippable ads, you can use CTR (click-through rate) to check if your ad connected successfully with your target audience. In case you have a low CTR, there can be either of these two possibilities:

1. The ad isn’t connecting with your target audience.
2. The ad is being shown to the wrong audience.

Bottom line

If you want to use YouTube ads to grow your business, it is important to put your message across in one short video. Focus on creating an interactive video with valuable content. In the end, make sure that your ad answers the needs of your potential customers. Otherwise, there is an extremely high chance that the viewers will ignore it.

Bottom line, Youtube ads can prove to be a great marketing strategy and provide you optimal results for your business. We hope this guide helps you in successful YouTube marketing

It is time for you to create your perfect YouTube ad.

Now go on!

When you talk of paid ads, business owners and marketers track metrics such as quality score, cost per click (CPC), and click-through rate (CTR). However, these metrics do not tell you everything.

If you have a high PPC conversion rate but do not have strong overall revenue, the problem may not be with your ad. It could be that your customers have decided to leave your business.

A metric that can help you in this regard is the PPC churn rate. Your PPC churn rate is defined as the total number of people who convert through paid ads but decided to end the relationship after buying or subscribing to your service or product.

Your PPC churn rate looks particularly at the customers who get converted from paid ads from platforms like Google ads.

Why Should You Check PPC Churn Rate?

Most PPC metrics depict how well your ads persuade people to purchase. For instance, conversion rates show how often individuals actually buy from your paid ads.

But, these metrics do not tell you a lot of things, such as:

1. Are customers unhappy with your products or service?
2. Does your ad focus on features your customers care about the most?
3. How well does your onboarding process works?

Some of the things your PPC churn rate can tell you are:

• If your customer service isn’t good
• If you have a confusing documentation
• How well your onboarding process works
• Whether the expectations of customers match your service or product
• Whether your competitors provide a feature that you do not

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All in all, you should care about the PPC churn rate because it can tell you a lot about your business. If you are not paying attention to why customers are leaving and in what numbers, you could simply be wasting away valuable ad spend on customers who won't stay with you.

How to Calculate Your PPC Churn Rate?

To calculate your PPC churn rate, here are the two things you should know:

1. The number of customers who signed up from your PPC ads.
2. The number of customers from paid ads you lost by the month’s end.

The formula to use for calculating churn rate is:

For instance, let the number of customers of your business who converted from PPC ads at the start of the month be 100. Suppose your business lost 32 of those customers. Now, your PPC churn rate will be:

(32/100) x100 = 32%

Strategies To Help You Lower Your PPC Churn Rate

If you calculate your PPC churn rate and get disappointing churn rate results, you must know different ways in which you can improve them.

Let's discuss them one by one:

Identifying Why Your PPC Churn Rate Is Higher

If you get a high PPC churn rate, then the first step that you need to take is to identify the reason for its higher value. This can pose quite a challenge as there is not an easy answer for this.

Begin by looking at things such as:

• Do you give documentation?
• Do you have outdated software?
• Are there any problems with your product’s quality?
• Do you have a customer service strategy?
• Does your competitor offer a better solution or feature?
• How is your onboarding process?

To find the cause, you can also perform UX testing and competitive analysis. Customer reviews can also point out where your customers seem to struggle.

If you can find what is causing a high churn rate, you can definitely take steps to lower it. But, if the cause still is not clear, there are some other strategies you can follow.

How To Lower PPC Churn Rate With the Help Of Customer Loyalty?

One of the best ways to decrease the churn rate is to ensure your customers are satisfied and happy. Some ways to improve customer loyalty are:

1. Provide Loyalty Rewards

Try to foster a bond between your business and your customers by rewarding long-time customers. For instance, you can offer high-value customers a dedicated customer support line, early access to new features, and more.

2. Create a Community

Creating a community can provide you with multiple advantages. One of the most significant benefits you get when you build a community is that it serves as a medium to interact with your customers. Creating a community also helps drive user-generated content, which is useful in your marketing efforts.

Create a place on platforms such as Slack, Reddit, and Facebook where your customers are able to create new friendships, get some valuable tips, and get a chance to interact with your team.

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3. Focus on Customer Service

Poor customer service is one of the top reasons customers leave. Ensure that your customers don't have to read laboriously through lengthy, terrible documentation to know how to use your service or tool. Make a video documentation or craft an easy-to-use FAQ. Also, think about using a chatbot to deliver timely customer service.

4. Make it Easy For Your Customers

Always offer a convenient experience to your customers. They should be able to make a purchase easily, get the required information, and conveniently navigate your website. Doing so improves your customer loyalty as they can quickly get what they need.

5. Attach A Cancellation Survey When People Choose To Cancel

Cancellation surveys are the same as employee exit interviews in a company. In an exit interview, you are asked why you are leaving the company and what steps the company can take to improve. This way, the company gets honest feedback about things such as management decisions and work culture.

Cancellation surveys are created with the same purpose. Knowing why customers aren't sticking around gives you a chance to improve and prevents you from losing future customers.

When a person goes to cancel, attach a cancellation survey with just a handful of questions. For instance, when the person chooses cancel, a question box can appear and ask the person the reasons for leaving.

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Tip: Ensure that the cancellation survey is easy to complete and offers multiple-choice questions. Refrain from giving too many choices as the person can feel overwhelmed and click away. Provide choices such as too expensive and no longer require the service. Also, create an other option along with an answer box for customers who wish to write detailed feedback.

6. Create a Smooth Onboarding Process

Paid ads may persuade a customer to convert, but your onboarding process can decide how the customer feels about your business. Make sure your onboarding process is smooth. If individuals are confused regarding how to set up or use your service, you have a problem. If customers can't fathom how to use certain features, your service or product may not provide them any value.

Some ways in which you can improve the process of onboarding are:

• Make the entire process easy for your customers: Make your documents in a way that your customers easily understand. Also, do not forget to label them.
• Ask your customer’s preferred contact method:  Ask their preferred contact method. Some customers prefer the phone while others may prefer email. Also, as your customers may live in different time zones, ensure you know when to contact them.
• Provide tips: Make it a point to let your customers know how to make the most of your product or tool. For this, you can create an automated email campaign that offers tips and tutorials.
• Only ask for information you require: Some information is essential to ask, like a customer’s email address and language preference. But, think before asking for some other information from them such as a physical address, company name, etc. Doing so is important because you don’t want to annoy your customers.
• Don’t Rush It: You may want to explain how amazing your service or tool is right away. But, introducing too many features at the same time can overwhelm your customers. Instead, you can use spaced-out emails and triggered popup boxes to talk about the features over time. Begin by engaging your customers and then tell them about the extra features when they are at a stage where they want to learn more.

Tip: Make it a point to check your process of onboarding once every few months. This way, you can modify the things that aren’t working successfully.

7. Make It Easy For Them to Contact You

Making customer service a priority helps in reducing your PPC churn rate. Customers are more willing to cancel if they struggle to reach your customer support.

Begin by replying quickly to posts and messages on paid ads. For instance, you ran a paid ad on Facebook for one of your products. Now, ensure that you respond to the requests and questions from customers in the comments.

When you respond, customers get the information they require. They also start to trust you more.

Some more tips that you can follow are:

• Ensure that your contact information is clearly shown on your website and important landing pages.
• In your PPC ad, provide the phone number or email address of your customer service.
• Put in place a chatbot to give answers to questions that are frequently asked.

If customers know they can rely on you to help them and they can easily contact you, there is a low chance they will cancel your service or product.

Wrapping It Up

If your churn rate is high, start by figuring out why. Remember, your customers may want to leave for a number of reasons. Next, try to remain focused on customer loyalty. This means you need to create a smooth onboarding process and make it easy for customers to get in touch with you. Finally, ask the leaving customers the reason they don't want to stick around anymore.

Note: If you need help with managing your client's PPC Campaigns, DashClicks' White Label Dashboard can help you. If you are an agency that wants a personal white label dashboard for PPC clients and is looking to manage things using automation, you can check out DashClicks' White Label PPC. Sign up for the platform today. It's completely free!

Every business owner dreams of seeing their website on top of search engine result pages. Still, sometimes small mistakes may result in harsh penalties that can turn your otherwise successful website into a barren landscape.

Backlinks have been a strong signal of a website's authority and trustworthiness since the dawn of the World Wide Web, and they are always held as a prominent ranking signal by Google and other search engines.

However, sometimes, people try to trick search engines by adding spammy links that don't add value. Link penalty can also spell doom for your online business. There are many examples where websites went from boom to doom within a few days because of a Google penalty.

If your website is a crucial part of your business, you must regularly monitor your link profile to avoid unforeseen penalties due to toxic links. If a penalty has accidentally hit you, there is no need to panic, as Google must already work on it.

However, you can manually remove many such toxic links using Google's Disavow Tool. It will save your website from losing its ranking or traffic.

Link building is considered crucial for SEO and content marketing. Marketing teams celebrate every time they achieve a milestone regarding the number of links added to their websites. These backlinks act as online billboards for your business. The more links you have, the better it is for your website because Google takes it as a sign of trustworthiness and value you offer. Along with quantity, link quality is also crucial for search engine rankings.

There are certain types of links that the search engines really dislike and they need to be removed as soon as possible. As a standard rule, you should invalidate links that look spammy or unnatural because these are the links Google doesn't perceive as a sign of trustworthiness.

The Occasions When You Should Invalidate a Link

You should quickly invalidate a link that looks potentially damaging for your site’s SEO using Google’s Disavow Tool. If you don’t do that, the algorithm can punish your website by removing it from the search results or dropping your rankings. There can be many types of bad links, such as:

1. Links coming from the pages created with the sole purpose of collecting links (link farms)
2. Links from spam sites
3. Links inserted in spam comments (especially blog comments)
4. Links that come from countries other than your target market

Such links should be removed as soon as possible, according to Google. Good backlinks are proof that your website offers quality content and is trusted by many. Good links boost your domain authority and page authority.

Toxic backlinks can negatively impact your site's SEO, but you need to avoid invalidating every such link pointing to your site. Some of these links can be great for branding.

Google also warns its users on its Disavow Tool's welcome screen that they should use this tool selectively, and with great caution. Indiscriminately invalidating the links can damage your website's prospects.

Use this tool only when you are 100% sure that you have identified potentially toxic links that may hurt your website.

If you are still confused about whether to remove a link or not, read on. Google doesn't tell you to invalidate all the wrong links. So, is it necessary to invalidate a link when Google's new algorithm is already working on the link penalties? Google launched Google Disavow Tool at a time when it had introduced its Penguin algorithm update.

Here is a helpful illustration from Moz:

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It was an intelligent algorithm update that was aimed at ignoring spam links, but it couldn't do it perfectly. Certain websites are still being penalized because of bad backlinks, which suggests that none of the algorithm updates are perfect. It seems that Google employees impose penalties after a manual review of backlinks. So, Google Disavow Tool is still relevant as it allows you to invalidate specific links.

What to Do Before You Invalidate a Link?

It's important to know that invalidating a link is not always the right solution. It may seriously damage your SEO. It is your way of telling Google that the link is a serious threat to your website and that it must be removed. So, you have no option but to invalidate the link.

Before declaring a link invalid, the logical step would be to contact the source website and request them to remove the link. In most cases, you can easily find the site owner's contact details on the site itself. You can check the footer and sidebar if it is not available in the Contact Us section.

It would be best to write an email or call on their phone number and politely ask them to remove the particular link. A professional approach, polite demeanor, and clarity of purpose will help you achieve your objectives.

Here is a sample email:

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Alternatively, you can contact them on social media or leave a comment on their blog post. You can also search for the website owner's name on Google and LinkedIn and reach them at a given contact address.

If the webmaster is still untraceable, you may invalidate the link using Google's Disavow Tool.

How to Detect Toxic Links?

For an ambitious business owner, content creation and website promotion is an ongoing phenomenon. As a result, they build numerous backlinks every dayā some of these links are engineered or earned by them, but many are entirely unwanted and uncalled for.

Differentiating toxic links from standard links can be tricky. Before you decide to use Google's tool for disavowing harmful links, you should first try to determine whether a link is good or bad using Neil Patel's backlink tool.

Here are some ways to check the quality of a link to determine whether the backlink is beneficial or harmful for your website.

1. Is the Link Coming From a Page That Is Black-listed or Banned?

Run Link Detox to audit the link, or use the new Link Simulator to find out. If these tools detect it as a banned page, disavow the link.

2. Is the Link Coming From a Dangerous Page?

If a site is flagged for possible malware, malicious activity, or a virus in it, disavow it instantly. If it got black-listed after being the victim of such an attack, it should inform Google. When Google detects such virus or malware in a website, it notifies the site owner via Google Search Console. From your backlink profile, you can use link Detox to detect such domains.

3. Is the Link Coming From a Page of a Weak Domain?

Use a backlink profiler report. You can use the metric LRT Power*Trust metric to find out weak links. A Power Trust value of 0 and a Power Trust domain value of less than 5 indicates a weak link. The tool offers you a reliable and easy way to measure the trustworthiness and power of any link.

4. Is the Link Coming From a Domain That is Penalized?

If you have a backlink coming from a site that has been penalized by Google, there is no way but to disavow it. The same is the case with a domain that is not indexed by Google and a page that doesn't rank for its own title in the first 30 pages of SERPs.

Finding Toxic Links Using Neil Patel's Backlink Checker and SEMrush

Here is an easy and quick walkthrough of how to use Neil Patel's backlink checker:

Step 1: Go to the backlinks page and enter your URL

Step 2: Get a detailed backlink report for your website

The report offers you a list of web pages pointing links to your website.

But, this list contains both good and bad links, and you need to filter the wrong links from it.

You can also use SEMrush's backlink audit tool to check for toxic links. The software uses 30 "Toxic Factors" to detect such links.

You can quickly invalidate the links from the SEMrush interface, but the best practice is to do it manually, so everything goes fine.

Make a list of all the toxic links gathered from SEMrush and other tools. From SEMrush, you can export it by following these steps:

A. Click on the "Toxic" tab and select all the toxic links

B. You can export the list as a *.csv file that contains terrible links

Combine this list with the lists extracted through other tools mentioned above.

Now, this final vital master list contains all the toxic links that you can invalidate. Save them separately. You can use this doc on Google's Disavow Tool later.

Double Check the Links You Want to Invalidate

Here is an important tip: Don't be in a hurry to invalidate a bad link using Google's Disavow Tool. In case your website has only a few wrong links, audit each link before taking any action.

The idea is not to blindly follow the tools while detecting harmful links. Once you understand the underlying reason for a penalty, you'll get better insights into what type of links can cause trouble in the future.

However, it doesn't work when you have numerous toxic links. In that case, just cast a glance on them to find and filter "harmless" links.

Having antivirus software installed will also help, as you can avoid clicking on a link that looks malicious. It will keep your website safe.

Here are a few examples of the backlinks that you should invalidate without a second thought.

If you have a travel website, and your backlinks come from scrap metal sites, casino sites, porn sites, or blockchain sites, it can be a recipe for disaster. Something that doesn't fit your industry won't benefit you in any way ā be it targeting the audience, attracting quality traffic, or building trust.

You can bring these sites in front of your firing squad, i.e., Google's Disavow Tool.

The truth is Google hates irrelevance, and it can hurt your brand. It's better to disavow such links.

The same applies to weird links, TLD (Top-Level Domains) links such as .top, .xyz, and .loan, .google, .localhost, .oracle and .mitsubishi, etc.

An example of a rare TLD: https://www.clix.capital/

This site is a one-stop lending firm, and if it points to a website with a non-financial niche, it makes no sense.

However, there can be a few exceptions too. If a website that doesn't belong to your niche publishes a listicle that points links to the best sites in a specific domain, it's an example of good press and not a toxic link. Country-specific TLDs such as .ru and .cn are also not signs of a good reputation, though they are not always bad.

It would help if you always disavowed Links from spam sites. Most sites with .xyz TLDs are spam sites. You can set up a spam filter in Google Analytics to identify spam sites.

You should include all spam sites in the master list mentioned above that should be a text file with a .txt extension.

It's time now to move to Google Disavow Tool.

How to Use Google's Disavow Tool to Invalidate Links?

Using Google's Disavow Tool is not rocket science; however, preparing for the process may be tricky.

First, you will see this warning sign:

We have discussed above that you should disavow a link if you are 100% confident that that particular link is harming your website. Otherwise, the entire exercise may further damage your site's rankings and traffic.

Google Search Console will first ask you to select the site you want to use to disavow toxic links.

Then there comes the following warning to make sure that you are fully aware of what you are doing.

Click on the tab Choose File and select the .txt file that contains the master list of toxic backlinks.

Click on the Submit button, and Google will take care of the rest. It might take a few days to get the links invalidated.

How to Submit a Disavow File to Google?

We have already described the complete procedure above, but here is the summary of all the steps to simplify things.

Create a master list of links to disavow, which should be in a text file (.txt) format. Make sure only one URL is listed per line. The maximum data in a file shouldn't exceed 2MB. You can split your file if you have more than 2MB of data. You can upload your list directly on the tool.

Conclusion

You should be very careful while disavowing links. If you end up invalidating some good links instead of the toxic ones, you'll seriously damage your SEO. So, make sure that you do due diligence while identifying the poisonous links.

It's, therefore, crucial to familiarize yourselves with this process. Once you know the game, you can easily clean your link profile.

Invalidating toxic links leads to many immediate benefits, such as boosting rankings so that users can find you easily and quickly. With improved SEO, you'll likely experience more traffic and time on site. But here is a word of caution: don't invalidate the links in a hurry relying totally on tools. It's always better to manually identify and invalidate the toxic links. You never know which of the links is sending you traffic and adding value to your site.

Invalidating links should always be the last option. With all these considerations in mind, the idea of disavowing the links can be intimidating. Still, once you get familiar with the process and see the benefits when you do it right, it becomes a lot easier.

Still, if you need an expert to do it for you or your agency, so your clients don't complain about the loss of traffic, etc., hire the white label SEO services from DashClicks. We have experienced SEO experts on board who will make life easier for you.

Since the beginning, fast-loading websites have been considered SEO-friendly. Apart from ranking high, faster loading pages lead to happier website visitors.

According to a study by Google and SOASTA, 40% of the visitors leave a web page if it loads in more than three seconds.

So, you have only three seconds to catch the attention of a user who clicked your ad or came through organic searches. If your page can't load in this time, your ad went in vain regardless of how attractive it was.

Page loading speed is considered a ranking signal. Google included many programs to help business owners improve their site speed. Accelerated Mobile Pages was an initiative taken by Google to help website owners increase their site speed by trimming many unnecessary features that take time to load.

Page loading speed is crucial to ranking because it's directly linked with User-experience. The load time is so critical for ranking that Google considers it a significant ranking signal. Nobody would like to visit a website that takes an eternity to load.

Initially, AMP created a considerable stir, and even the social networking sites like Twitter went ahead and implemented that. But soon, it faded away into obscurity, and in 2021, its symbol was entirely removed by Google from its search results without any announcement.

So, in this article, we will discuss everything about AMP, including what it is, how it functions, and whether it is still relevant in 2021:

What is AMP?

The open-source coding project offered by Google was designed to help business owners create websites that can quickly load on mobile devices.

AMP strips the web pages down to the essential elements and stores its cached version on Google servers, so Google flashes the result almost instantly.

The program filters ads, videos, and animations, so only the most relevant content and images are left on the web page. It's the most coveted feature for mobile users because they don't want to see many ads and videos on their screens while reading an article or a blog post. Heavy elements can prevent a web page from downloading instantly. Most of the information the mobile users consume is urgent, so any distraction or delay will result in a high bounce rate.

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Earlier, Google flashed a lightning bolt icon in front of AMP pages pulled up in the SERPs so that the user may differentiate fast-loading AMP pages from average websites. Google gave these sites an advantage to encourage users to click on them to have a good user experience.

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But, when Google discontinued the lightning icon to mark AMP websites, people had an impression that AMP would no longer exist as an SEO practice.

Why Was Amp Introduced?

The ultimate goal of AMP was to provide a swift user experience by delivering content with the speed of lightning, even on poor Internet connections. Google was so obsessed with the page load speed that it made it a crucial ranking factor. Google's prime objective of creating AMP pages was to compete with Facebook instant articles and Apple News.

How Does AMP Work?

According to Search English Land, AMP has a three-part structure:

1. AMP HTML: Equipped with some custom tags and properties, AMP HTML is a subset of HTML that you can easily use while adapting standard pages to AMP HTML with some custom tags and properties.

If you want to know the difference between AMP HTML and basic HTML, you can refer to the AMP Project's list of required markup.

2. AMP JS: This is a Javascript framework for mobile pages. It is used to manage resource handling and asynchronous loading. Developers should know that third-party Javascript is not allowed with AMP.

3. AMP CDN: This is an alternative Content Delivery Network, which makes your website super fast. It caches your AMP-enabled pages and optimizes them for performance.

Optimized HTML code is used to render AMP pages. It removes HTML code tag manager aspects to trim the page elements and make them load faster. Javascript is not generated for your AMP pages.

• A streamlined version of CSS is used with AMP
• The JavaScript library you can use is provided by AMP, which restricts you to a great extent, and the page speed may suffer
• Unless adequately validated, the AMP sites will not work
• Load custom fonts separately
• Declare height and width to prevent quirky-looking images
• You can use videos on your AMP page only with AMP-approved extensions

Many people will be surprised to know that every AMP page has a specific URL, but it is not its actual URL. Since these pages are hosted on Google servers, their URL may look like this: google.com/amp/s/www.dashclicks.com/

Google is committed to showing these sites faster, directing the user to its AMP version hosted on its servers. It not only reduces the page load time but also improves engagement, conversions, and revenue.

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How Will You AMP Your Site As a Beginner?

If you are a beginner, you must know that you need to maintain two versions of an article page while creating the AMP version of a website. It includes an original version for the users and its AMP version.

As explained above, AMP doesn't allow third-party JavaScript and additional elements such as form elements. So, you will not be able to replicate on-page comments, lead forms, and use several other elements which AMP strips down from a standard page.

Hack to use iframes: If you want to use iframes, there is a hack you can try:

To accommodate these restrictions, you might have to recreate your site template. For example, while creating the AMP version, all CSS must be in line and be less than 50KB.

It would help if you loaded custom fonts using a unique amp-font extension and handled multimedia separately.

To optimize images for AMP, you need to use the custom amp-img element and include an explicit width and height. Otherwise, you will have trouble downloading the image in the AMP version.

For animated GIFs, you can use an amp-anim extended component.

To embed locally hosted videos via HTML5, you can use a tag known as "amp-video."

However, for YouTube videos, you can use the component -- amp-youtube.

Here are some other components you can use:

Slideshows => amp-carousel

Image lightboxes => amp-image-lightbox

Social media embeds=> extended components

These extended components can easily be used with a bit of planning for your web design.

To help Google understand that you're using the AMP version of your article, you need to modify the original version a bit. Add the following tag, which acts as a canonical tag for AMP.

<link rel="amphtml" href="http://www.example.com/blog-post/amp/">

Sometimes, you need schema.org metadata to explain the content type being used on the page. The currently listed page types, according to GitHub, are:

• Recipe
• Article
• Review
• Video

Schema.org metadata is an essential requirement while making your content eligible to appear in the Google search news carousel. So, to pull traffic to your website from Google by implementing AMP, you should adequately implement your schema.

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Pros and Cons of AMP Pages

When Google first introduced AMP pages in February 2016, they had received a desk-thumping welcome from the industry. Experts went to the extent that it is the future, but the romance between Google and AMP soon ended, and it started losing steam. Now that Google has completely stopped using the AMP badges in 2021, its credibility in the market is already finished. Another study by Kinsta proved to be the last nail in the coffin for AMP, which said that AMP reduced 59% of the leads.

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Here are the pros and cons of AMP pages:

Pros of AMP:

1. Low website loading time
2. Easy to use on WordPress with a simple plugin
3. Improved Google rankings

Cons of AMP:

1. Reduced ad revenue because of fewer ads
2. Hard to implement without WordPress
3. Limited analytics prevents you from seeing the fluctuations in traffic
4. Limited elements in content and design mean minor features for branding and traffic diversion within the website
5. Limited lead capturing
6. Limited social sharing

So, AMP has more cons than pros. That might be the reason why Google has dropped it because site speed can be increased through various other methods.

Who is AMP Beneficial For?

Google has already decided to take it off because it has been found counterproductive for most websites. However, there are certain websites where you can still use AMP. Here are some of the examples:

1. If your website is still struggling with speed issues even after optimizing for speed.
2. If more than 70% of your traffic comes from smartphones.

AMP is probably not for you if your website is conversion rate optimized, already fast, and highly branded.

AMP Best Practices

If you still feel AMP can benefit you in some way, here are some of the things you should remember while implementing it.

• Implement AMP when it is inevitable and makes sense. Would you mind reading the previous section to know who it’s suitable for?
• In case you aren’t using WordPress, it’s better to hire a remote developer. Using the AMP WordPress plugin can be a bit complicated for you. Hiring a developer is the best option in both cases.
• Avoid implementing AMP on high converting or high traffic web pages as it eliminates essential elements like opt-in form and branding. So, it should not implement AMP on pages dedicated to generating leads or branding.
• The good news is you can try A/B testing on AMP. So check out how it impacts crucial metrics like conversion rate etc.

How Can You Get AMP on Your Website?

You can use the AMP plugin if the CMS you use is WordPress for your website. If you don't use WP, here is the alternative walkthrough. If you have never done coding yourself, it's better to call a developer.

Do You Still Need AMP Pages?

With radical changes in Google policy regarding AMP pages, they are not as valuable as they once seemed. Prominent sites and portals are ditching them, and Google has removed the AMP icon from the SERPs. It can be a bit useful if your site is a news site that publishes a huge volume of news.

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Conclusion

Businesses embraced AMP when it was first released amid much fanfare. It was considered a cure-all elixir, but soon people woke up to this crude reality: it has more cons than pros. Experts argued that it would work for temporary content pieces such as stories etc. But Google soon ditched it as a requirement for top stories and removed the AMP icon from the search results. So, it can't drive any additional traffic to your site. So, the website owners now should focus on improving site speed through other measures. Since more and more people are using mobile devices to search the web, the user experience on mobile should be seamless and user-friendly. It is the only way you can increase traffic and grow your business.

Can you recount the last time you selected a restaurant without going through its online reviews? Today, checking out online reviews before trying out a service or a product is not limited to dining or entertainment alone. In this day and age, buyers heavily depend on what people are saying online about all kinds of businesses.

If you look at the statistics, 91% of people in the 18-34 age group trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations.

Considering this, you can easily tell one thing. If a person searches for or comes across your business on the web, your online reputation determines how they perceive your brand.

Therefore, it is important to know that the online reputation of your brand is “everything” today! Online reviewing is like digital word-of-mouth marketing. It can influence whether or not prospects purchase from your business.

Given that people consider a brand’s online reputation before making a purchase, it has become more important than ever to know about ORM. It is short for Online Reputation Management. ORM is all about creating a positive online narrative around your business. It proactively influences the kind of information individuals will find about your business online.

Simply put, ORM is an ongoing task that creates and maintains your brand name as well as its good standing.

Why Does Online Reputation Management Matter?

Always remember, individuals, are talking about you irrespective of the size of your business. These people can be your clients, customers, prospects, and friends. Even as we speak, they could be posting a comment on your blog, tweeting about your current product, posting on Facebook about their experience, and doing a lot more.

Keeping this in mind, you need to put in ORM efforts for the purpose of protecting or restoring your brand image. ORM manages content in search engines. Moreover, it encourages satisfied clients to provide more positive feedback.

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The Top Content Types Which Hurt Your Brand's ORM

Let's discuss the types of content that can hurt your business:

1. Negative Feedback on Social Media

You can get negative reviews on social media portals such as Instagram and Facebook. During this time, ensure you provide a speedy resolution. Negative reviews are inevitable and responding to and resolving customer complaints does not tarnish the reputation of your business permanently.

2. Online Reputation Bombs

Poor online reputation can impact your reputation and sales for an extremely long time. They are incredibly powerful because of their prominence in search engine results.

Some examples of defamatory content that can appear in Google’s search results about a company are:

• Negative Reviews: Review sites allow customers to express their opinion on a specific business. On these sites, they answer if they liked your product/service and will recommend it to others. Negative reviews on these websites can impact your sales.
• Negative Media Coverage: Unfavorable print, TV, and online media coverage negatively affect brands and companies.
• Hate Sites: People can also create an ad hoc website on which they express their opinions and even post illegal content it. These so-called “hate sites” sometimes attack public figures and companies with false information and insults. A search result such as “The truth about YOURCOMPANYNAME” for instance can make your prospects change their mind about purchasing from you.

The Key to ORM: Check What People Say About Your Business

As we mentioned above, people are constantly talking about your brand, products, and services online. You should make it a point to listen to these people to manage your online reputation. And for this, you can use social media monitoring tools.

For instance, you can do social media monitoring for your business via Google Alerts. It helps you monitor the web for mentions of your business. All you need to do is sign into your Google account, visit the Google Alerts page, and enter a phrase or a keyword in the search box.

You will get a notification on your email each time Google finds a result that holds relevance to your alert criteria. Also, you can easily set alerts for specific languages and regions.

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Online Reputation Management Tips

Given that we live in a digital era, nothing can protect your business from criticism. To help you remain on top of your reputation, there are some practical tips that you can follow. Apart from making efforts to become well-respected in your field, here are some useful tips you can implement:

A. Check Your Google Results

Always pay close attention to your Google results. If the words “rip off” and “scam” are linked with your business, then it is something that must concern you. Implementing a strong SEO strategy is your best answer to negative reviews, false reports, and negative press.

B. React Fast But Politely

Ensure you respond quickly but politely to a customer complaint. For instance, if a customer writes a complaint on Twitter, you can reply with a simple and prompt response, such as:

“Thanks for making us aware of the problem. We are working on it and will get back to you as soon as possible.” This is better than a late reply, even if you communicate more information in it.

C. Focus on Improving Yourself

Sometimes criticism can offer an opportunity to know more about your audience and create a better message for them the next time.

Best Practices for Online Reputation Management

To monitor and manage your brand reputation online, you can follow some best practices. Let's discuss some of these practices in detail:

1. Your Business Needs to Be Transparent

Today, brands are required to be completely transparent. When you share the good and the bad about your brand, this means you are transparent with your audience. The benefit you get out of it is simple - it helps build trust among your audience.

Now, you may wonder how to “be transparent.” Let’s discuss some of the ways in which you can do that:

• Requesting feedback
• Letting employees talk about services and products publicly
• Establishing a one-to-one communication channel
• Addressing criticism publicly

2. Update Your Digital Handles Regularly

Ensure that you make a complete profile of your business on professional and social media platforms. Moreover, make it a point to create a consistent and cohesive brand presence on landing pages, social pages, and other digital media handles. You must use the same colors, logo, and content tonality during this time.

3. Encourage Your Satisfied Customers to Write Reviews

You can always encourage your happy customers to write a testimonial or review for your business. This way, your prospects get to read positive and honest opinions about your brand. To help your customers leave a review, provide them with a link or send them an email.

Note: Make sure that you thank the customers who have left a positive review.

4. Respond to Negative Reviews

Make it a point to respond to negative reviews promptly. Try to think hard of a solution to reply back with. Providing a resolution helps curb the damage a negative review can cause. If you respond with an apology without a solution, then it just feels empty.

Tip: If the mistake is from the customer's side, ensure that you gently point it out. Refrain from using foul or sarcastic language.

All in all, when you publicly respond to negative reviews, it shows that you are a brand that acknowledges its mistakes and is more than willing to rectify them.

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Conclusion

The first step towards managing your online reputation is listening to what your audience has to say and searching for ways in which you can connect with them. Building an SEO strategy and responding to online criticism are other crucial steps that you need to follow.

If you haven't started to build your brand's online narrative yet, it is time you start now! Because believe it or not, people may be putting up reviews, vlogging, or talking online about your products as we speak.

Do you want to stand out in a crowded industry?

Does your business operate in a niche with a tiny audience?

If your answer is yes to one of these questions, then you should consider niche marketing.

You may be wondering, what exactly is niche marketing and how is it going to help you?

To help you understand niche marketing, let us first define a niche market – A niche market is a tiny, defined segment of a larger market.

Now, let’s talk about niche marketing. It is basically a marketing tactic that is aimed at attracting and converting a particular market segment.

This marketing is specifically beneficial for reaching customers who you can target based on specific characteristics. These characteristics include hobby, demographic, occupation, and commitment to political/social issues.

You can focus on the following categories of customers with this type of marketing:

• Young professionals
• Environmentalists
• Pet lovers
• New homeowners
• Couples who are planning a wedding

Advantages of Niche Marketing

When you use niche marketing to reach small audiences, it benefits you in many ways. Niche marketing not only improves relationships with your customers but also provides you the advantage of word-of-mouth marketing. Here’s a more detailed look at the benefits of niche marketing:

1. Makes Your Business Visible to Relevant Customers

Niche marketing makes you visible to the right audience. This is because you use strategies that are designed for the people who will most likely find your services and products interesting.

2. Competitive Advantage

A majority of brands aim their marketing at the larger market. However, niche marketing helps you market a service or product to a particular section of the market.

When you serve a specific or limited audience, you face lesser competition. This is because fewer competitors would be providing the same offering.

3. Builds Brand Loyalty

Another advantage of niche marketing is that it can help you build brand loyalty. When you engage with a smaller audience, you are able to focus more on providing quality customer service. You also get to develop and nurture a relationship with them. This helps develop loyalty for your brand. You start to become their trusted partner because you take care of their specific needs.

Strategies for Using Niche Marketing to Reach Tiny Audiences

Many niche marketing strategies are useful in reaching, attracting, and converting small audiences that are otherwise hard to reach. Read on to know more about these strategies in detail:

1. Conduct Extensive Audience Research

A challenge that you may face in niche marketing is how to understand the unique demands of your target audience. For this, you need to carry out extensive audience research to know how you can reach them in the best possible manner. Moreover, the research will help you understand their pain points. Here’s what you can do to conduct audience research for a niche market:

A. Create Buyer Personas

To better understand your ideal customers, develop their buyer personas. Buyer personas are research-based and describe your ideal customers. They talk about the challenges they face, how they make purchasing decisions, and what their days are like.

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B. Conduct Competitor Research

Carrying out competitor research is extremely important for your business. Analyze the kind of audience your competitors reach and the ways in which they engage with them.

2. Create Relationships With Your Audience

We already know that there are only a limited number of customers in a niche market. For success in a niche market, you should try to build relationships with your customers and audience. This is because, when you do so, you can get repeat customers.

Remember, it is always more convenient and cheaper to retain an existing customer than acquiring a new one.

3. Select The Platforms Carefully

When you want to reach a tiny target audience, you should choose the social media platforms they use regularly.

Research points that Gen-Zers prefer Snapchat. On the other hand, we recommend that you try to reach millennials on Facebook.

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To determine which social media platform to choose, ask yourself questions like:

• Where does your audience shop?
• What are their preferences when it comes to social media channels?
• How do they find products?

Doing so will help you select the right social media platform to establish communication with your target audience. Make sure you tailor your content according to those platforms.

4. Take Steps to Become an Authority in Your Niche

We all can agree on one thing – individuals will listen to those who know best! And for this, they go to the experts in their respective fields.

If you want to become a figure of expertise and authority, you need to be persuasive, well-informed, and creative. This is how people are going to listen to you.

Some ways in which you can become an authority in your niche include:

• Produce Valuable Resources: Resources such as case studies, white papers, and blog posts exhibit your expertise and help develop authority.
• Offer Free Advice: Give some free advice to your niche audience to communicate to them that you understand what they want. For doing so, you can have conversations with them on social media and niche forums.

When you become an authority in your niche, customers find you and recommend your products to their friends and family.

5. Build Brand Loyalty

If you focus on building brand loyalty, you can make your customers your very own brand ambassadors.

Here are some ways you can build brand loyalty:

• Engage With Your Customers: Whether it is email or social media, use every opportunity to engage with your audience. Make sure you add value whenever you engage with them.
• Create Unique and Outstanding Experiences: From your customer service to your products, make sure each interaction a customer has with your business is exceptional.
• Align with the Core Values of Your Target Audience: Aligning your brand with your customers’ core values helps develop brand loyalty.
• Predict Their Needs: Use customer behavior data and buyer personas to check what your customers may need and deliver it to them. It creates the impression that you value them and wish to make their lives more convenient.

6. Dive Deeper Into Your Competitor’s Strategy

When you talk about niche marketing, your best resources are your competitors. Remember, you always get to learn a lot from their marketing strategies.

When you dig deeper into your competitors marketing strategies, you gain a good understanding of:

• The market
• Your audience
• The weaknesses and strengths of your competitor

When you identify who your competitors are, the next steps to focus on are:

• The list of keywords that they target
• The ways in which they engage with their target audience
• The different content distribution platforms they use

When you follow this pointer, you are able to create more effective niche marketing strategies.

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Bottom Line

With an effective niche marketing strategy in place, you can:

• Gain a competitive edge
• Optimize your marketing budget
• Raise your conversion rates

Remember, your niche market is always searching for someone who understands them. When you understand them and know what they require, get out there and kickstart your selling.

While it is important to understand your niche audience, having an SEO-friendly website for your brand is equally important. This is because it helps generate organic traffic and enhances the customer experience. Since building a professional, SEO-friendly, and niche-based website takes several days, we recommend that you use DashClicks' agency website tool. With this tool, you can make an SEO-friendly, custom-branded agency website in seconds. Pretty cool, isn't it?