Businesses worldwide are increasingly using blogging as a tool to attract visitors to their websites. It has become a powerful way to gain traction to your website and increase your business's visibility on search engines. According to a survey by blogger.com, more than 60% of businesses run blogs as part of their digital marketing strategy.

However, 65% of these websites haven't updated their blog section in the past year. In not taking blogging seriously, they miss out on the incredible opportunity to rank on search engines and hence lose a lot of traffic.

If you want to get the most of your blogs, here are nine effective tips on optimizing your blog post for SEO.

Important tip: Before you decide to optimize your blog, make sure that your website is SEO optimized. You cannot construct a high-rise building with a shaky and weak foundation.Ā

1. Edit and Proofread

For an SEO-optimized copy, make sure your blog post is appropriately edited and proofread. It should be clean and error-free. According to an Adobe 2009 study, wordy or poorly-written content annoys about 39% of readers.

Carelessness and poor quality can create a negative impression. Proofreading involves screening the content meticulously for errors, typos, grammar, formatting, and other related inconsistencies. In other words, proofreading's primary objective is to write a perfect blog post. Even if your content is informative and grammatically correct, you need to make sure that it has the right tone, proper persona positioning, logical flow, contextual images, and style guide consistency.

Proofreading tips:

1. Take a printout of your post and edit it offline. It is more effective and easy on the eyes.
2. Read your article out loud. It is beneficial when you are optimizing your content for SEO. The goal is to create a copy that reads naturally. Make sure that the keywords don’t sound unnatural or stuffed.

Various Chrome extensions can help you read aloud. MS Word that comes with Microsoft Office 2019 and Microsoft 365 also provides this feature under the Review tab. You can access it by:

Review > Read Aloud > Select Play in the controls.

1. You can also try proofreading your article by reading it backward.
2. Try to proofread with one goal at a time. The first time you can proofread for grammatical mistakes. The second time, check data and facts, and so on.

2.  Consider the E-A-T Factor

Another critical aspect that will determine your content's ranking is how beneficial it is for the user. Therefore, you must evaluate it based on the E-A-T (expertise, authoritativeness, trustworthiness) factor.

These are the factors that Google considers for ranking purposes and they are directly linked with the trust factor. The ultimate objective of Google is to offer the best experience to its users and the E.A.T. factor is an important metric that determines the level of trust Google puts in a particular website.

Here is an infographic that will help you understand the E.A.T. factor.

3. Optimize Subheads for Readability and SEO

Using subheads such as H2s and H3s help. Google spiders consider content with subheads as reader-friendly. Check your content on your CMS's visual editor to ensure the subheads are correctly added.Ā

4. The Links Must Open in a New Window

If links are opening in the same window/tab, the bounce rate may increase sharply as it leads to a poor user experience. Nobody wants to exit from a website just because they chose to click an outbound link. So, when adding links, make sure they open in a new window.

5. Add Call to Action

You should add CTA (Call to Action) to your blog post tactfully. You can place text CTA anywhere in the blog. However, you will achieve better results with an image CTA if you put it within the first, second, or third subheadings. Ensure that you add a strong CTA at the end of your blog post to prompt your readers to take action.Ā

Screenshot Courtesy: Blog.Hubspot.com

6. Add One-Click Social Shares

Twitter is a great platform to promote content. It's not just about Tweets; you can also leverage Twitter Chats, a powerful content promotion tool. Most of these chats lead to an ongoing discussion with a specific hashtag. If you belong to the same domain, you must take advantage of it. Search for relevant Twitter Chats on TweetReports and Twubs.

You can use a Click to Tweet plugin to share your WordPress content on Twitter. The Content Marketing Institute blog does it effectively to promote its blog posts. Your blog may have takeaways and punchlines that the readers should be able to share on Twitter with one-click.

Screenshot courtesy: Content Marketing Institute

However, make sure there aren't too many extra codes that can interfere with your rankings. Don't put any "click-to-Tweet" above your first H2.Ā

7. Add Meta Title and Description

Add a suitable meta title and meta description for your blog post. WordPress CMS allows you to do it quickly. A meta description's ideal length is between 155 and 160 characters, but it should be sufficiently descriptive.Ā

The title text can be between 50 and 60 characters, the ideal length that Google displays on SERPs. In the WordPress CMS, the ideal length is depicted by a green light that indicates you can go ahead with the meta description. If you are using the Yoast SEO plugin on WordPress, you'll have a color-coded smiley to signal perfect SEO.

You must also be mindful of your blog's readability. You will find a readability indicator in your Yoast SEO plugin. Pay attention to the engagement factor; it plays a significant role in deciding your Google ranking. It uses metrics such as "time spent on page" and "average time spent on the site" to measure engagement.

You should also include a call to action (CTA) in your content; it helps increase conversions and overall sales.Ā

8. Add ALT Text to the Images

It is vital to add alt text to your blog's images. This descriptive text is beneficial for the visually impaired or those using a screen-reader. Short for "alternate text," it tells the search engines what the image is about and helps them index it accordingly. For image visibility on Google, adding alt text is incredibly important.

9. Optimize for Social Sharing

You can easily do it with your site's SEO plugin (such as the Yoast SEO plugin) if you use WordPress. Click on the social sharing icon from the SEO options.Ā

You don't need to fill the title and description fields, as Yoast automatically pulls this information from the main fields. Scroll to the Facebook and Twitter images and upload your pictures there. But make sure that the image you select has alt text and a title tag.

Conclusion

The blog post SEO process can be frustrating and time-consuming, but if you follow the tips mentioned above, you'll attract organic rankings and traffic easily. Every step you take to optimize your content will improve your visibility on search engines. Attention to detail can make all the difference in your quest to achieve top rankings on SERPs. Therefore, you must take out some time to optimize your blog posts to boost your overall Google rankings.

An important question that many business owners ask is which platform should I put my budget into ā Facebook or Google?

If you have a local business such as a roofing company, people will need it only if their roof is damaged. However, if a roof is damaged, a client will not go to Instagram or Facebook to find a roofing contractor. They'd go to Google and look for a roof repair service near them.Ā

In this scenario, your company will be better off running ads on Google. On the flip side, on Facebook, products based on impulse buying are more effective. In this article, we will discuss the strengths and features of both these ad platforms.

Google Ads VS. Facebook Ads

You might have seen both Google Ads and Facebook Ads, but they work differently. Both platforms operate on a pay-per-click basis where you have to place the bid to show your ads in their ad spaces. The mobile advertising revenue on Facebook makes up approximately 90% + of their total advertising revenue; so, you shouldn't shy away from mobile targeting.

Paid Search VS. Paid Social

You can't say which is better out of these two as their ad mechanism is quite different.

The right question to ask should be:

1. Which one better fits my budget?
2. Which one is more suitable for the product type that I’m offering?
3. Which stage of the buyer’s journey I’m planning the ad campaign for?

Let’s have a look at it with respect to your situation.

Customer Acquisition Cost and Advertising Budget

Success in digital advertising depends on how good you are with numbers. The failure to estimate how much you can afford to pay to win a customer may result in wasting money and directionless campaigns.

While doing the math, don't focus on a lead or conversion individually, as it might not work well. Pumping money into retargeting and using the leftover funds for the final stages in the funnel will help you get the best returns possible.

Google Keyword Planner can help you predict likely costs. Some of the industries and niches are extremely expensive and have a high cost per click that might influence your ad budget.

The cost per action in the technology industry is the highest. If you have an ad budget of $100 per day and your average cost per click is $20, you can afford just 5-6 clicks a day. Insurance is one of the most expensive keywords on Google, with a cost per click of $54.9.

Source: WordStream.com

It would help if you had thousands of impressions to know what ads and keywords yield the best results.

If you have a shoestring budget and are struggling with costly clicks, you can still use Google Ads. However, it would help if you changed your expectations from both the channels as Facebook can be a more feasible and effective alternative with laser-sharp targeting capabilities.

One more effective way to use Google Ads is to show ads to only your website visitors.

Set Your Objective

Once you have determined your budget and identified your competition, you should consider what your expectations are from your campaigns.

If you are not that much focused on closing sales, Facebook ads can boost your brand awareness and demand generation. It will also be an affordable option comparatively.

If you already have some degree of brand awareness and want to capture demand and generate sales, Google Ads would be a better alternative because they are intent-based.

Google search is entirely intent-based, and in this scenario, you can target more users coming with a higher intent to purchase.

As an informed marketer, you will evaluate your options to choose your ad platform. It is a well-known fact that Facebook Ads offer less cost-per-conversion. Quality is also crucial in this game and you will have to accept the cost for a qualified lead that is easy to convert. Google Ads has a high cost per conversion.

Keep measuring your results and tweaking your campaigns to achieve your ultimate objectives.

Stage in Buyer's Journey

The buyer's journey stage is an essential factor that decides which advertising channel to use for the best results. Since both the platforms have different features, they can be a great fit at other times in the buyer's journey.

Since people use Google search with a high level of buying intent, Google Ads is the best channel to leverage to capture users for conversion.

Since people use Facebook more casually, you can use it to generate initial awareness and initiate conversations with people, especially when they have a current or a new need for your product or service.

Both these channels can be used judiciously and selectively as part of your digital marketing strategy.

Product Maturity and Search Volume

If you have launched a startup or a new product or service, it may not have any search volume. In that scenario, Google Ads will not help you bring traffic and achieve other goals.

With the exploding E-commerce industry, the term "dropshipping" did not even exist a few years ago, and no one searched for it. With many E-commerce companies disrupting the industry, it became a popular search term.

It wasn't a pain-point user look for, but people started using it as a search term when it became a popular business.

Sometimes, the product you are selling is not related to a keyword directly, but some pain points can be positioned. The keywords related to those pain points can generate volumes of traffic compared to the technical name given to the product.

For all such products that offer an innovative solution to a problem but people don't search for, Facebook Ads is a great place to start an awareness campaign. We can't target the audiences based on user intent on Facebook, but we can do so by targeting them based on their demographics and interest.

Demographics Sensitive Products or Services

If your product or service is related to a specific life event, Facebook is the right platform for you. Facebook can also target people based on life-changing events, and we can leverage that as marketers.

Even Google allows demographic targeting, but it won't help you much if people do not search for it. However, the targeting mechanism of Facebook enables you to target people based on specific life situations.

For example, Facebook allows detailed targeting with life events such as new parents, newlyweds, and newly engaged people with further segmentation based on the time elapsed after this life event.

Brand Recognition

Startups are less successful in search compared to a well-established company, even after working hard on building brand awareness. A competitor with more brand recognition compared to yours may win this game. They might get a higher click-through rate (CTR). You can leverage Facebook Ads to increase your brand reputation and recognition before you decide to move to Google Ads to capitalize on an intent-based search.Ā

The Conclusion

There is no one-size-fits-all solution that you can use when choosing from Google Ads and Facebook Ads. However, you can take the following steps to win this game.

1. Determine how much you can pay for a conversion.
2. Choose Google as your advertising partner if your industry operates in a search-heavy environment.
3. Perform keyword research to check the CPC ranges you are targeting in Google Ads.
4. Evaluate your estimated budget in different scenarios.
5. Continue testing until you find the right mix.

It is important to plan your ad spend to make sure that you spend it in the right place. If you look at the sheer numbers, Google is the undisputed king of the web. With approximately 260 million unique visitors and 5 billion daily interactions, Google virtually controls the internet, and advertising on Google is one of the most effective ways to generate revenues for your business.

From Stanford University's grad school dorm room in 1995 to its launch in August 1998, a small search engine named Backrub became Google as we know it now.Ā  The mission of its founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin was to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful. Inspired by its astronomical success worldwide, Google launched its advertising platform Google AdWords in the year 2000.Ā  Later on, it was rechristened as Google Ads in 2018.

You must have come across Google Ads and might have clicked on a few of the ads. In this article, you will learn how to build an advertising campaign on Google from scratch. It will also cover features specific to the platform and useful information on how to create, run, tweak and optimize the campaigns for the best results.

In order to be successful on this platform and generate clicks, your ad should be more focused and appealing.

What are Google Ads?

Google Ads come under the pay-per-click (PPC) model where, as the name suggests, the advertisers pay per click on an ad.

Search engines handle intent-based queries and return the most relevant results that match those queries. Google Ads also appear alongside the organic results and these ads can drive qualified traffic and generate hot leads for your business.

Google Ads are considered a sure-fire way to boost your business. You receive qualified traffic and phone calls when people click on those ads and this way, Google Ads keeps your business activities buzzing.

If done right, it may increase your CTR and traffic exponentially. Extra Space Storage launched Google Ads in 2014. Everyone is a potential customer for the second largest self-storage operator in the US. It was a big challenge to target such a wide audience and engage each customer with real-time messaging. They experimented with different ad copies and targeted specific customer segments using Google's ad optimizers to create relevant and timely ads. Through tailored messages and using different ad groups, it grew its CTR by 113%.

There is a science behind why Google Ads are more successful than other types of online ads. Google Ads allow your business to show up on the SERPs when your prospects are looking forā  those products and services. This way, you can reach your target audience right when they need you the most. They look at your ads when it makes sense to them.

Google Ads also help you improve those ads for even better performance.

Google attracts more than 35% of all digital advertising spend on the internet, yet it is one of the most challenging platforms in ensuring the return on investment.

If your ad campaigns aren't properly optimized and targeted, you may quickly lose hundreds or even thousands of dollars without getting any returns.

Introduction to the New Google Ads User InterfaceĀ

If you are planning to kickstart your first Google Ads campaign, consider yourself lucky as they have recently rolled out an update that drastically improves the platform. Not only is the new user interface more user-friendly, but it also offers advanced analytics and reporting features.

Here are a few things the new interface changed:

A. Creating ad groups (crucial to your ROI and campaign success)

B. One dashboard to run the campaigns and access all kinds of data

C. Get campaign snapshots for better analysis and reporting

D. Get advanced insights to better monitor your campaigns

E. New account overview page for a quick assessment of all the campaigns running on it

What is The Quality Score and How To Use It?

You must be familiar with the concept of the quality score to run a successful Google Ads campaign.

The score is controlled by three factors:

A. Your Landing Page: Consider the following factors:

1. Check if it loads quickly
2. Measure conversion rate
3. Measure bounce rate

These metrics will help you know whether you are receiving the right kind of traffic and whether your landing page is able to meet their needs.

B. Expected CTR: Track the performance of your ad campaigns through this metric. Measure it against the average CTR.

C. Ad Relevance: Your ad should be relevant in relation to the search queries being used.

Why is the Quality Score so Important?

According to AdEspresso, quality and relevance scores are directly related to the CTR and inversely proportional to costs per click. So, a campaign with a better quality score is more likely to succeed and yield a better ROI. A good score will also help you rank higher with your ads without having to bid higher.

Should I Advertise on Google?

If you want to know whether Google Ads is right for you, here is a suggestion. Spend on Google Ads only if you have a budget to spare. However, with trial and error, Google Ads can work for most businesses. You don't need a large sum of money to spare;Ā  you can invest a few hundred dollars to test if it works for your business.

If you want to know how much you need to pay for a single conversion, do some simple math. Every industry has an average cost per click and an average conversion rate. So, if an average conversion rate is 5%, it means you would need 20 website visits to get a single conversion.

The total spends required for a conversion is the average cost per click multiplied by the number of visits required. If the cost of conversion exceeds your cost margin, then Google may not be a viable option for you. The objective of posting an ad is to make money and not just to generate sales. You want a positive ROI apart from driving sales.

Types of Advertising on Google Ads

At present, Google offers four major types of ads i.e. display ads, video ads, search network ads, and app ads. Let’s discuss all these major types to understand how they can work for you.

• Search Network Ads

Search network ads are among the most prevalent Google ads that appear as text ads on Google SERPs. So, whenever we search Google using a query, the ads that appear on top are referred to as the search network ads. Obviously, these ads are triggered by specific keywords and you have to bid on them to appear higher on the SERPs.

• Display Ads

Google display ads would appear on the websites under Google’s Display Network and can show up in the form of text or banner ads including Gmail. Display ads are mostly used for remarketing purposes when we want the visitors back on our site for conversion. If you are visiting a website and come across an ad on it, it must be coming from the display network.

• Video Ads

Video ads mostly run on YouTube and they are displayed based on your watch history on YouTube and search queries made on Google.

• App Ads

If you have used a mobile app, you have probably come across some ads while using that app. These ads are called app ads and these are pretty common on free versions of various apps.

• Google Shopping Ads

If you have an E-commerce site, you can implement Google Shopping and you will be able to advertise products from your online store directly on Google.

However, the most common types of ads among all these types are search network ads and display ads. Contrary to what many people think, it is relatively easy to set up an ad. If you want to appear on top of search results and want to attract leads, you can begin with the search network.

Create a Remarketing List

Marketing is all about engagement, conversations, reminders, and persuasion. Remarketing is also an effort to send marketing messages to people who have already been attracted to your website but failed to convert. However, the site is not at fault as 98% of people who visit a website for the first time do not convert.

To prepare your remarketing list, go to your Audience Manager and create a new list based on different interactions such as website visitors, YouTube videos viewers, or app users. You can also create a custom list of your own. It will allow you to target people as per these interactions.

Remarketing campaigns are considerably cheaper and have a lower cost per conversion than the normal campaigns because in these campaigns the target audience has already interacted with your brand at least once and is familiar with it.

In-Market Audiences

Google uses artificial intelligence and machine learning to identify buyers with purchase intent. Using in-market audiences, Google collects search query data and studies users' online activities including the sites they visited, ads they clicked, and products they bought to find people with purchase intent with a high degree of accuracy.

The process of refining the ads gets better with time as with machine learning, Google understands what is working and what's not. Google also advises you to mix your in-market audiences campaign with remarketing campaigns to get the best results.

Use Competitor Data to Get Campaign Ideas

Spying on your competitors on how they are targeting the audiences on a particular network will help you save money and time and make your campaigns highly effective.

You can expand your campaign based on competitor insights and make them even better. You can use tools like SEMrush to explore the exact keywords that your competitors are using.

SEMrush can do the following things for you:

A. Helps you track your competitors' landing pages and how they are ranking.

B. Provides you with all the data you need to create a powerful campaign to outsmart your competition.

C. Provides you with ad copy ideas saving you time.

Learn to use Google Ads Keyword Planner

Google Ads Keyword Planner is one of the most powerful tools available to marketers that helps them find the most effective keywords for their business. Apart from relevant keywords, it also provides insights on those keywords people are using anywhere in the world to search for the products or services you offer. It also helps you with the suggested bids and the amount you should bid. The keyword tool lets you know how competitive these keywords are. These insights will help you make better decisions for your campaign.

The best thing about this tool is that it will give you a long list of suggested keyword ideas so that you can create a campaign according to your budget and still get positive results.

How to Advertise on Google?

Before you get ready to dive into PPC advertising and reap its enormous benefits, go through the following checklist to make sure you are prepared for the rendezvous.

• A properly designed website and landing page created specifically for the purpose of conversion
• Make sure you are ready with your PPC strategy and have your goals defined.
• Decide a budget for your campaign and also a timeline to test the results

Create your Google Ads account

Before setting up a new Google Ads account, you need to sign in to your Google account. Add your business information on the next page and click submit. After the congratulation message flashes, click on the Explore Your Campaignā  button.

To start advertising on Google, after account creation, follow these steps:

Step 1:Ā  Define a Goal

Click on the Start Nowā  button on the Google Ads homepage and then click on the New Campaignā  once you are on the dashboard.

You will reach a new page where Google will ask you your advertising goals. These goals will help Google know the type of audience you want to target and how you will pay the bid money.

Tip: Defining your campaign's goal is important as it will decide the success or failure of the campaign.

First, you need to learn how to set smart objectives. It will help you to build systems to achieve your campaign objective.

The tool will then prompt you to create a campaign. However, you should skip that step the first time, as your current objective is to know the interface and how it actually works.

Step 2: Add Your Business Name and Keywords

After defining your goals, click nextā . On this page, you will have to confirm your business name. You also need to add the URL of the landing page you want to send your audience to. This information can't be changed, so make sure there are no errors.

The old interface of Google AdWordsā  needed many key inputs after this, such as choosing a budget, selection of keywords, and billing information, etc. However, the new user interface will take you directly to the campaign page, where this information is needed in a different format.

Before you create your first campaign, you need to complete some vital steps.

Step 3: Perform Primary Keyword Research

Keyword research for the Google Ads campaign is a vast topic. However, you should focus on the following key areas to build your PPC keyword list.

A. Website: Look for the keywords your website is targetingB. Use a keyword research tool: You can use keyword research tools such as Google Keyword Planner (for keyword suggestions and details), Ubersuggest (to get the queries and search terms people are using for similar products), and SpyFu to get competitor insights.C. Brainstorming: Think like a customer and come out with your own keywords.D. Include brand terms: Use your own brand terms. For example, Nescafe can use the terms like Nescafe gold, Nescafe coffee, and Nescafe cup, etc.

Your keyword research doesn't stop here, as it's an ongoing process, but these steps are enough to build the initial list.

Using Google Keyword Planner for Keyword Research

From your campaign dashboard, go to Tools and Settingsā  and then click on Keyword Plannerā .

Once you are in the Keyword Planner Tool, go to Discover the New Keyword Toolā .Ā  With the help of this tool, you can find relevant keywords and also get ideas for new keywords to target.

When you enter your product name or the business you are in, click on Get Resultsā .Ā  The tool will return a list of keywords with crucial details about them. It will include the average competition the keyword is facing, average monthly searches, top-of-page bid, low and high range, and ad impression share.

Step 4: Set Up the Ad Groups

Advertising involves lots of experimentation and variation in ads and therefore, you need different types of themes for your ads. An ad group is a group of ads with the same theme and target audience. For example, if you have a restaurant business, there can be different ad groups such as desserts, beverages, and snacks. Each ad group can target different keywords. For example, if you choose dessertsā  as an ad group, you can target keywords such as chocolate cake, ice cream, cupcakes, and cookies, etc.

Before creating ad groups, you can divide your campaigns based on:

• Seasonality
• The location you’re targeting
• Products and services you offer
• Keyword performance and bidding rates
• Brand names and the generic names people normally use
• Keyword match

Step 5: Ad Creation & Landing Page Mapping

The next step is to focus on writing ads and mapping landing pages with each ad group.

Writing ads is the most interesting part of the job - designing an actual ad. Create the ad headline as well as its description and then check it in the preview box on the top right. Google provides you tips during this process with the help of sample ads so that you can do it on your own.

After that, you can proceed with campaign creation and focus on campaign settings. Without properly written ads and excellent landing page experience, your campaign stands high chances of failure.

The most challenging part is to write great ad copy and it's possible only when you know your audience and what appeals to it.

However, the key to writing a captivating ad copy is to know your customers' pain points. If you are able to do that, they will likely click on your ad and convert. You can also do some audience research beforehand.

Writing ads to catch the attention of your target audience and a properly designed landing page is crucial to achieving a higher click-through rate, low cost per lead, and maximum ROI.

Here are some PPC ad copywriting tips you can use.

Tip: Your ad text also affects your ad quality score.Ā

Character Limits for your PPC ads

In a Google ad, your arsenal includes 300 potentially visible characters with three headlines, two descriptions, and the URL to entice a user to click on your ad.

Responsive ads are the latest ad format on Google. To know more, read this article by Mark Ferree.

Add Extensions

Add extensions appear below the ad and advertisers can leverage them to enhance the impact of an ad. You can go through this Google support document to know how to select extensions to use.

Landing Page Mapping

Each ad should direct the customer to a landing page that should offer exactly what he is looking for in a minimum number of clicks. With a shorter attention span and a lack of patience, users may go back to the search engine if they don't find what they are looking for. For example, if a user has searched for Elizabeth Arden perfumes, he should be diverted to the page where he can find most of the bestseller perfumes the brand offers.

With this, your preparation work to set up your campaign is complete.

Step 6: Campaign Creation & Settings

When you are ready with your ad group variations and the landing pages, it's time to go back where you started from ā€” i.e. signing into your Google Ads account.

Go to Campaign>New Campaign

You'll be prompted to a page where you need to select your goal.

You can choose from a variety of campaign options such as Search Network, Display Network, or the combination of both, shopping ads, video or universal app campaigns, etc.

You also have the option to choose devices, languages, and locations for your campaign.

Choose your bid strategy

You can now choose your daily budget. Set this to a realistic number and then modify it as you go ahead and learn from your campaigns.

Google also offers automated bid strategies but you should start with manual bidding and choose a cost per click you can afford for a campaign.

Step 7: Finalizing Your New Google Ads Account

After creating your first campaign, you'll finish and save. Now, you'll be prompted to enter your billing information to trigger your ad. You can also go to the top right corner of the ads interface and select billing & paymentsā  manually if you're not prompted to it. Google also allows you to make prior arrangements to be invoiced through credit cards on a monthly basis. In that case, you don't need to enter your billing information.

Review and publish

It's time to review your ad. Once you are satisfied with all the aspects, you can click on the submit button.

Hurray, you have created your first Google Ad!

Technically, the process of creating your first ad is over at this stage, but a bigger challenge remains in front of you and that is to tweak your ad as per the Analytics' recommendations. You cannot achieve the best results without refining, optimizing, and improving your existing ads as per the insights received by using Analytics.

Tracking Google Ads with Google Analytics

Tracking and analysis is an important part of running an ad campaign on Google and if you are not doing it, you can't gain much from it. When you analyze your data, you can determine what tweaks you need to make to supercharge your campaign. It is important to know that Google Analytics is not integrated automatically with Google Ads, and you need to set it up first. Linking your Google Ads account to Google Analytics property allows you to see the full customer cycle i.e. till a customer makes a purchase.

Have a look at the crucial metrics of click data and costs of your Google Ads on Analytics. Analytics is incredibly important to design future campaigns and perform tweaks after evaluating the performance of current campaigns. In order to track conversions, you can set up event tracking.

Make sure your landing page is optimized and the User Experience (UX) on it is excellent. The Call to Action (CTA) should also be clear and there shouldn't be any distraction.

How do you feel when you are watching an interesting YouTube video and the video is interrupted by an ad?  The ads can keep interrupting the video more than just the one time, potentially spoiling your viewing experience.

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People generally don’t like to watch or pay attention to intrusive ads. It becomes even more prevalent in the wake of shrinking attention spans and the overall slump in the reach of social media channels. Emerging competition and loss of public trust maybe some of the reasons behind it. ROAS (return on ad spend) on Facebook advertising decreased from an index value of two in April 2018 to below 0.5 in the following months after the Cambridge Analytica scandal.

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You may also lose your ROAS if your ads are not hitting the mark. So, marketers are always on the lookout for more sustainable options to ensure that their marketing efforts are paying off.

If you are seeing your ROI decreasing, divert a part of your marketing spend to content marketing and create authoritative, persuasive, and thought-provoking content that triggers an emotional response.

What is Content Marketing?

With the declining effectiveness of traditional marketing, marketers the world over are switching to content marketing.Ā

Below you can see the definition of content marketing according to Content Marketing Institute, an online resource for everything related to content marketing.

Why Content Marketing?

Here are a few stats that will blow your mind.

1. Businesses leveraging blogging as their content marketing weapon are 13 times more likely to see positive marketing ROI.
2. According to a Content Marketing Institute study, 200 million people now use ad blockers
3. Content marketing leaders experience 7.8 times more site traffic than non-leaders.
4. According to a 2015 IBM digital experience survey, 56% of marketers believe that personalized content promotes higher engagement rates.
5. According to a Demand Metric study, content marketing costs 62% less than outbound marketing but it generates more than three times as many leads.
6. According to a Content Marketing Institute study, 88% of B2B marketers use content marketing in their marketing strategies.
7. Content marketing adaptors have nearly six times higher conversion rates than their competitors.

Businesses have now woken up to the importance and effectiveness of content marketing. Here are a few benefits of content marketing every marketer should know.

1. Less Annoying and More Engaging

Content marketing provides value, and it's not as annoyingā  compared to intrusive ads. Traditional advertising is losing steam and digital advertising is facing many challenges including attention span issues and people using ad blockers.Ā

According to a 2016 Google survey, 600 million devices were using ad blocking software programs worldwide. This trend is likely to grow in the future. Content marketing provides a better and more sustainable alternative to digital ads. There is no need to divert all your marketing spend on ads when you can achieve better and long-term results by creating engaging content according to the interest of your target audience. People love to read blogs and watch YouTube videos related to the topics they find interesting.

2. Enables You to Use Education to Engage

There are many brands that are successfully pitching product information to educate their audience and to encourage them to purchase. There is a psychology behind what drives people to purchase and more and more companies are now using that to their advantage.Ā

Whole Foods is a brand that offers healthy organic food, not necessarily a unique segment. They do content marketing through their community blog which shares delicious recipes along with stunning photos of ingredients and many other things that might be interesting for their audience such as tips to keep kids healthy and spotlights on new local vendors.Ā

They take this educational value one step further to their brick-and-mortar stores where they put posters explaining things like seafood safety recommendations and the source and taste of a variety of mushrooms they offer.

Similarly, Stanford University uses an educational approach to capture the attention of their audience on Facebook, YouTube, and their customized app. They target people who are interested in higher education either for themselves or for their children. To create excitement, they share studentsā€™ work and experiences and allow their teachers to interact with their fans, answer their queries, and provide on-the-go resources for current and future students.Ā

It is time-consuming to create educational content but it pays off in the long run because you build a navigable library of evergreen content which helps in raising brand awareness.

3. Creates a Sense of Reciprocity and Gratitude

When someone offers valuable content for free, they create a sense of reciprocity and gratitude and their audience tries to pay it back by buying their products and services. It also creates brand affinity and trust which helps you to be on their mind. Ann Handley of the MarketingProfs fame, often quotes her friend, Tom Fishburne, The best marketing doesn't feel like marketingā .Ā

When we talk about human behavior, reciprocity triggers the sense of indebtedness in return for an unexpected favor, which brands use by providing free educational content that helps them solve a problem. Gratitude related reciprocal behaviors are an important element of relationship marketing and it affects performance outcomes.

4. Attracts Customers Without Paying a Single Penny

While advertising online, you attract traffic by paying money for it. On the flip side, by creating custom content for different customer segments, you create fresh pieces of content that keep on engaging and bring the readers one step closer to the final stage in the sales funnel. These content pieces act like free online ads that arenā€™t intrusive and posted for a long time.

5. Improves SEO and Delivers Traffic for a Lifetime

Content marketing is not fleeting and transactional as it aims to build long-term relationships. The essential element of content marketing is to keep a conversation going. Since the content we create addresses the queries and concerns of customers and includes popular and intent-based search terms, it becomes a rich, SEO-friendly extravaganza.

Since content is the foundation of organic search, it is the best way to drive traffic to your website. Content is also the number one priority for Google and anybody familiar with inbound marketing knows that you can't win the game of SEO without a robust content marketing strategy.

Effective and helpful content helps your SEO in many ways. High-quality content excites your audience and helps you increase the click-through-rate (CTR) and average session duration. When you create useful content that adds value and provides answers to searchers' questions, Google rewards you with higher rankings in the SERPs.

Courtesy: Stupid Simple SEO

High-quality content also attracts backlinks from high authority websites and thereby helps you to increase Google's trust in your website. But to achieve this, your content should be intriguing, informational, inspirational, data-driven, exciting, and entertaining.

6. Helps to Exploit the Benefit of Sharing

One of the best features of social media for marketers is that it allows users to share content. If your content is exciting, entertaining, and informational, people will love to share it and your business can get enormous publicity without spending any money on promotion.

7. Multiply Traffic From Various Content Formats Such as Podcasts and Videos

Content marketing also allows you to multiply traffic by repurposing your content into different content formats. During content repurposing, we can convert a blog post into a video or a podcast. Similarly, an infographic can be converted into a blog post or a slide deck presentation resulting in the creation of various content pieces. These can be used at different content marketing platforms to exponentially boost traffic. For example, a blog, when converted into a slide deck presentation, can be uploaded on sites like SlideShare, Google Slides, Prezi, Powtoon, and Haiku Deck. A webinar can be converted into a blog post, a podcast, and a video and its key messages can be used as tweets and social media posts.

8. Content Marketing is Highly Targeted

Targeted content is the holy grail of content marketing. If you want the content to be successful, make it personalized and try to speak to a specific person with a specific need. You should also keep in mind where the user is in the buyer's journey. To create targeted content, you should have ample information about your audience.Ā

Messaging is also an excellent way of creating targeted content, which helps you shepherd your audience through every step in their buyer’s journey. There can be various stages in a buyer’s journey such as:

1. Creating awareness
2. Promoting discovery (providing education about the products and services and how they can solve their audience’s problems)
3. Foster comparisons
4. Encourage a sale

It also allows you to do geo-targeting and demographic targeting.

Other Benefits

Apart from that it also offers the following benefits:

A. Increases brand visibility
B. Helps build a long-term relationship with your audience
C. Strengthens trust and loyalty
D. Helps you position yourself as authority in your niche
E. Enables communication through social shares and comments
F. Pushes your prospect to move through the purchase decision faster
G. Provides value without any terms and conditions

Conclusion

So with all these benefits, content marketing turns your website into an authentic source of information related to your area of expertise. Engaging content will also make your audience flock to your website and help them make an informed decision. The content created for different stages of a buyerā€™s journey helps them move to the next stage in the sales funnel. It leads to word-of-mouth promotion apart from trust-building that sparks loyalty.

When creating your marketing blueprint and deciding how to allocate your time and resources to it, you should consider a few crucial distinctions. SEO and PPC (Pay Per Click) ads are two major digital marketing strategies, but you need to understand the difference between them to adopt the right approach for your business.

This article will explain whether you should invest in SEO or PPC to achieve better traffic and conversion results. It becomes even more critical when you are on a shoestring budget. SEO helps boost your search engine ranking and makes your website more relevant to users' queries.

You can't pay to rank high in organic rankings, this can be either a good or bad thing depending on who you ask. Furthermore, Google is committed to keeping organic search content extremely relevant and trustworthy for the users.

On the flip side, PPC ads are paid advertisements that we see next to the organic search results if you are looking at SERPs and also at other places online. It's important to note that running paid ads will not improve your SEO rankings and Google refutes such false claims.

SEO vs. PPC: Which One is Better?

Google started with organic search results, and still, it is its biggest USP (Unique Sales Proposition). When you perform a search on Google, organic listings come just after paid ads or sponsored results.Ā

Organic Rankings: What is SEO?

It's crucial to optimize your website properly to increase the visibility of your website. With increased visibility, your site will show up quite often when relevant search phrases are used. When improving your site's SEO, there are several things you can tweak.

What is PPC, and When Do We Need It?

Google Pay Per Click advertising offers many solutions, and Google Ads is one of them. It allows marketers to bid on the chance to appear as an ad next to the organic searches when a user makes a query to look for what you have to offer. However, in this case, you pay when someone clicks on your ad.

These ads provide you the opportunity to be in front of a wider audience online. You also have the freedom to tweak your ads at any point in time to target a specific customer segment by demographics or interest.

Apart from that, it also allows you to promote a specific deal. It's an excellent opportunity for small businesses and startups who cannot invest in their SEO. Still, at the same time, they need enhanced visibility to keep themselves in business by promoting sales.

Google Display Network

Beyond Google search, Google Ads also allow you to be in front of your audience through your ads on relevant websites in the Google Display Network or GDN.

GDN comprises thousands of websites on the Internet, where you can access many potential customers.

You can also have the freedom to pick specific sites from the network and select the type of audience you would like to target. You can also let Google create a customer list to meet your objectives.

It's important to note that Google Ads don't provide the same results as SEO, and it will also not help you improve your natural search rankings. However, they give so much flexibility that you can grab your potential audiences' attention right when it's crucial for you. It also helps you even if you are a startup and don't have enough resources and money to invest.

Why Won't PPC Help Improve My SEO?

The ultimate objective of Google is to provide relevant and high-quality search results to users. If businesses are allowed to pay for higher rankings, the user experience will suffer and users will not get the required information through Google search. It will defeat the very purpose Google was created for.

Google Ads (SEO) Tools

Google Ads can't boost your SEO, but when you create a Google Ads account, it provides you several tools that you can use to optimize your site. For example, you can use its Keyword Tool to create a list of phrases and keywords relevant to your business. These keywords are frequently used and have the potential to generate a lot of searches. You can include these keywords in your site's content to boost your search rankings.

Google also offers some ad tracking tools through its ads account to measure the impact of tweaks made to your website and ad campaigns, leading to more visitors and conversions. Such insights are beneficial in optimizing your website and campaigns in a much better way, which is not possible without using these tools.

Google offers these tools to its ad users for free. The search analytics report comes built-in with Google Analytics, and it can track the queries and keywords that are attracting more visitors to your site even when you aren't using Google Ads. These insights are incredibly valuable from an SEO perspective.

The Pros of SEO

Before you figure out where to invest your marketing budget, you need to understand SEO's main advantages.

Here are some essential facts about organic SEO:

1. It’s the most cost-effective way to improve your website’s visibility.
2. Natural rankings are entirely free.
3. With improved rankings, you can see sustained results for a long time.
4. The results you get are similar to placing your ad on the web for your potential customers 24/7 without paying a dime.
5. It does not depend on the bidding by your competitors, so results are mostly stable.
6. It’s the most cost-effective option in the long run when you expand your operations and number of keywords; this is not the case with PPC as you would have to pay for every click even when you grow.
7. According to a study by Sparktoro, organic rankings can attract more than ten times the amount of visitors than with paid results.

The Cons of SEO

Even with the tremendous advantages SEO offers, it is not the right fit for every business. It has the following cons.

1. SEO takes time, especially for startups and small businesses.
2. There is no way you can start receiving traffic through SEO from day one, which is possible with PPC.
3. Since SEO is vast and involves many things such as content creation, technical SEO, link building, and data analysis; you need an entire team of marketers with a solid strategy to work together on your SEO project. It requires a considerable and continued investment.
4. SEO is an ongoing process that is never complete, so you need to consistently work on it.
5. SEO is not only time-consuming, but it’s also overwhelming and you need to optimize your site for the algorithm updates every year using advanced SEO tools.
6. SEO offers no guarantees for higher rankings but you’ll attain significant results with perseverance and patience if you have a strategy in place.

The Pros of PPC

1. The instant results you get through PPC offer various advantages such as instant traffic and conversions.
2. It is extremely useful for e-commerce websites with multiple products.
3. It is the first thing that the user sees, so it is even more visible than the organic results.
4. It offers more opportunities to attract search users’ attention to your ad as it uses eye-catching pictures and rich text with phone numbers etc.
5. To run PPC ads campaigns, you need a small team of a paid search professional, a copywriter, and a graphic designer compared to a vast team you may require for SEO.
6. It allows you to target your customers using shopping ads, search ads, video ads, Gmail ads, etc. Organic rankings do not offer you such a variety of options to tap your customers.
7. PPC gives you a wealth of data on keywords and ad types that the customers click before making a purchase, providing better insights to tweak your campaigns and improve your return on ad spend (ROAS).
8. It allows you to take a laser-targeted approach to serve ads to your segmented audiences based on different factors such as the time of the day, their location, and the device they are using.

The Cons of PPC

1. Attracting traffic using PPC advertising isn’t free, and you have to pay for every click. Sometimes these clicks are so expensive that you cannot afford them for specific product types where the cost margin is relatively low.
2. You need to spend for every click, so your conversion rate is quite important. If your customers are not converting, it means you are wasting a lot of money on your campaigns.
3. The cost of clicks may rise with every competitor entering into the fray bidding for the same keywords. It makes it difficult and unpredictable.  
4. You may need a high initial investment to get started.

Organic Search vs. Paid Search: Which One Should I Choose?

Ultimately, it’s your call. It’s worth considering that both SEO and PPC have their pros and cons and help your business in different ways. These days, people search online before making a buying decision, which applies to all products and services. People use Google to check business reviews and answers to their queries. They also check recommendations from influencers and verified customers and both SEO and Google Ads help get in front of these potential customers.

While SEO is a traditional approach that gives your business the required visibility and the chance of being found by internet users worldwide, it takes time and organized efforts to achieve rankings on the first page of Google.

If you want to reach out to the people looking for the products you are offering, you can leverage Google Ads. It works immediately without having to wait for your site to move up in natural searches. PPC is helpful regardless of your business's size, and it allows you to customize your campaign while on the go.

The Conclusion

Since we have discussed the pros and cons of SEO and PPC, it's time to address the big issue -- which strategy is right for your business? Even though it varies based on your situation and what you want to achieve, a hybrid model will work best. You can integrate both strategies intelligently and get each oneā€™s benefits as per your situation and requirements. Dividing your budget and using both the techniques as a hybrid will help you bring traffic to your site in the short term and boost your online presence for long-term success.

Have you used Facebook to promote your business? Are you struggling with the reach of your organic Facebook posts?

In this article, you will learn:

1. The best ways to promote organic content on Facebook
2. How to plan and schedule your posts
3. How to explore ideas for creating diversified post content for maximum engagement
4. How to set the budget to promote your posts
5. How to measure the performance of your organic content (experimenting with post variables and buyer personas)
6. How to identify the most successful posts that lead to conversion, capture insights, and use them for post modeling

Here is a complete walkthrough on how to use the organic and paid marketing strategies on Facebook to promote your business.

Facebook Marketing: Organic vs. Paid

There are two key differences when considering organic or paid promotion on Facebook. The first is that organic content is free and it's the soul of Facebook feed. People find it interesting, but with increasing users and changing Facebook algorithms, the reach of organic content is decreasing day by day. The second is that social networks are being designed in such a way that businesses have to pay to show up in the feed of a wider audience. But, both types of marketing have their own merits. So, before we discuss it further, let's have a brief overview of the difference between the two with the help of an infographic.Ā

How to Promote Organic Content On Facebook?

You can promote the posts you publish on your business page using Facebook. Facebook algorithms allow your posts to reach a wider audience when promoted. You cannot ignore post promotion on Facebook because it's crucial to your overall success on the social networking platform.

It's important to note that organic content can't do wonders without any paid promotion as the reach of organic posts is dependent on page followers, most of which will not see the posts. There is no certainty that the posts you create on your Facebook business page will reach your intended audience. According to social media experts, you should consider yourself fortunate if about 10% of your audience is able to see your posts while scrolling through their feed. Due to these circumstances, you should have a strategy in place to use your organic and paid content to work in tandem to achieve the best possible ROI.

The ultimate purpose of Facebook organic posts is to promote to the audience that is aware of your brand, products, and services. They will be receptive to your promotional offers when announced. So, the objectives of your posts should be to:

1. Educate your audience
2. Create brand awareness
3. Build excitement around the product and the company
4. Engage through community involvement

Here is the step-by-step plan to promote your business using both organic and paid tactics on Facebook.Ā

1. Plan Your Facebook Posts and Scheduling

The biggest mistake people make when planning their Facebook posts is using the wrong posting frequency. You may create tons of poor-quality content but it will not help you achieve your objectives. The best practice is to focus on quality rather than quantity and promote those posts to reach larger audiences that might be interested in your product.

You don't need to post every day or twice or thrice a day in order to prove your existence. Five quality posts per week may be far more effective than three average or poor quality posts a day. You can use a scheduling tool such as Hootsuite or Sprout Social to make your life easy.

2. Create Diversified Post Content for Maximum Engagement

The next thing you should pay attention to is the variety of posts. These posts should not take a lot of time to produce. If you're struggling to create quality posts in a given time frame, here are a few ideas to create different types of posts that will engage your audiences.

• Tell a story that resonates with real people
• Ask questions
• Share behind the scene photos of your business
• Share trending topics
• Share branded graphics with your company logo, fonts, and colors
• “Before and after” stories
• “This or that” analogy
• Share useful tips
• Customer highlights
• Product highlights
• Customer reviews of something they have tried which is related to your industry
• Share facts that answer the questions of your audience
• Share infographics and videos
• Share product photos and description
• Show some brand personality and share light-hearted humor
• Provide links to your blog posts
• Announce contests and giveaways
• Announce discounts and sales
• Share user-generated content

Apart from that, you should also follow these tips when posting on Facebook.

• Post consistently
• Test various posting frequencies
• Build a strong brand using personal videos with clarity and creativity
• Choose the right hashtags
• Create a branded hashtag
• Partner with micro-influencers to increase the reach of your posts
• Convert your social media audience into your email subscribers
• Use emojis
• Add CTAs everywhere
• Track and learn from your best performing posts

3. Set Your Budget for Promoting Posts

Determine how much money you can afford to spend to promote your organic content. It is not necessary to boost all the posts you publish. You can choose the top 10 posts per month and test them using paid promotion. The ideal budget to promote a post can be anywhere between $10 and $20. If you choose a lesser amount your ad may not run more than 2-3 days. Just choose a consistent number in the beginning and it will pay off exponentially.

4. Test Different Buyer Personas and Post Variables

After deciding the number of posts and the budget for boosting those posts, start testing their impact. Identify buyer personas which are also known as Facebook avatars; they may have different opinions and likes. You can create a variety of content for different Facebook avatars and do some testing to get valuable insights that would help you tremendously in your social media marketing.

Apart from the avatars you can also create content for different image types and styles of copy and present it to your Facebook audience. The insights you gather after people respond to your experimental posts will give you a lot of data that will help you know what's working and what's not in your posts and ads.

5.Ā  Identify the Most Effective Facebook Posts to Model

A post created with an engagement objective should have a cost per the objective of less than $0.08. Videos and blogs should have even less cost per objective. For your blog, you can aim for a CPO of less than $0.50. You can turn your top-performing posts into ads in Facebook Ads Manager by using their post IDs and running them as part of your preliminary campaigns. This way, you are likely to get thousands of likes and hundreds of shares and comments on your posts. When a post performs well, people are likely to notice it and it will lead to even more attention from your audiences.

The Conclusion

You should use Facebook not only to generate leads and sales but also for nurturing relationships. Establish a bond of trust by consistently being in touch and integrating your business into the lives of your customers and prospects.

This is essential for establishing your business as a trustworthy brand that people can use and refer to their friends and acquaintances. This requires using your organic Facebook content to work in unison with your paid content. Try this strategy in your business, analyze the results, and share your comments below.