30-second summary:

• Agencies are particularly struggling to find ways to gain a broad view of the search market.
• Many agencies rely too heavily on Google tools which on provide top-level search insights and need better tools.
• COVID-19 is resulting in surprising search results and agencies are having trouble explaining these outcomes without proper data.

Search advertising is one of the most dynamic and rapidly evolving areas of the advertising ecosystem today. And as search continues to emerge as the barometer by which all other advertising activities are gauged, the need for sophisticated search intelligence has never been higher.

Yet, agencies, in particular, are continuing to have difficulties deriving the search intelligence they need and finding ways to unlock the potential of the insights that they already have on hand. Moreover, as agencies continue to invest in more data-generating tools, they are having to sift through more data than ever, and are struggling to keep up.

With that in mind, below are some key items agencies should keep in mind when it comes to their search intelligence infrastructure and how they can get the best out of it.

Agencies only have a fragmented search view

The search landscape is vast and continues to reshape itself on a daily basis. Therefore, having the most comprehensive view of the search landscape and all its nuances is imperative to driving success and making the most informed decisions possible. And data is the key component in building this holistic view.

Incomplete and inaccurate data can not only depress campaign effectiveness but can also have detrimental impacts on an advertiser’s standing versus competitors. For example, without high-quality data insights, it becomes impossible for advertisers to detect when competitors start to encroach on their brand terms — among other things. However, with the proper data tools in place, agencies can build better strategies for clients so that they can achieve maximum ROI and protect their market position.

Google tools don’t allow for proper performance analysis

While Google does provide a top-level view of search performance it does not nearly do so in the depth that is needed for agencies to be able to properly explain performance to their clients, particularly as it relates to competitor activity. Agencies need to be able to quickly justify why performance has changed and what steps can be taken to address these fluctuations — positive or negative. And Google simply does not allow them to do this. Additionally, without a comprehensive set of insights, it can be very hard for agencies to justify budget needs to their clients as well, and how to counteract the spends that other competitors are dedicating to certain segments. So agencies should be very wary of only relying on Google’s analytics tools.

Explaining the COVID-19 effect

As COVID-19 has disrupted consumer online and search behavior it has also materially impacted the search industry. From differences in the types of searches to a growing prevalence of local search as individuals looking to stay closer to home amid the pandemic, the entire search industry is scrambling to make sense of what may unfold next as a result of the current crisis. In addition, as we continue to move towards the conclusion of the pandemic, search professionals are also being tasked with figuring out which pandemic era trends may stick around and which ones won’t, adding a further layer of complexity to this already hectic period. Questions like, “which industries will emerge first?”, as well as, “which competitors will emerge fastest?” all need to be answered.

Luckily, by embracing a more ‘whole-market’ approach to data, agencies can quickly make sense of the changes that are occurring and deliver data-driven explanations to clients seeking answers for why an unexpected outcome took place. Furthermore, agencies can keep track of which pandemic era trends seem to have “staying power” and game plan accordingly.

Enabling a holistic view

Given how many different silos exist organizationally at agencies, it isn’t surprising that synthesizing all of the data that exists and reporting on it is hugely labor-intensive. This can be particularly challenging for agencies that are assessing strategies across the full complement of clients’ advertising activity, including traditional channels such as TV and radio along with other digital channels like mobile and paid social in addition to search.

Breaking down the walls that exist between the different branches of agencies is the only way to get the “truth” when it comes to reporting. This means making sure that the data is fully harmonized, comparable, and accessible through an integrated tool that provides the right capabilities for each agency role. AI can also play a critical role in creating fast, highly usable insights that can quickly translate into action. . This integrated and intelligent approach will cut down significantly on time spent generating reports while also making an agency’s performance much more agile, effective, and accurate.

After having to deal with a tremendous amount of upheaval and rethinking over the last decade, the idea of having to adapt is not a new one for agencies. Yet, while agencies have done well to roll with the times thus far, search still represents a bit of a pain point. However, by re-examining the current state of their data operations, agencies can boost their search intelligence exponentially, while making their entire business more intelligent as well.

Ian O’Rourke is CEO at Adthena and Stephen Davis is the Global Product Leader for Media Intelligence at Kantar, a leading British market research company.

30-second summary:

• Bing isn’t the search engine with the largest market share, but it still serves millions of users every day. One-third of U.S. online queries are powered by Bing, most notably in terms of voice-assisted searches.
• The five effective and easy-to-follow Bing SEO tips below will help you rank for the secondary search engine quickly.
• A Bing SEO vs. Google SEO mindset is not productive, especially since both search engines use the BERT algorithm. Many optimization initiatives meant for Bing also work for Google, and vice versa.

You read that right: we’re focusing on Bing SEO in this article.

Did you know that Bing is the second biggest search engine worldwide? It also powers Yahoo!, the third biggest. In July 2020, Bing captured nearly 6.5% of the global search market.

In any discussion about SEO, mentioning Google is unavoidable. However, the industry giant isn’t the only search engine that can send traffic to your website. You can make Google SEO your primary focus, but it shouldn’t be the only one in your marketing toolkit.

A global market share of less than 10% doesn’t sound like much, but it translates to millions of users. Bing powers one-third of online searches in the U.S., counting direct searches and those done through Yahoo! or AOL. And as of August 2020, Bing controls over 13% of the U.S. desktop search engine market.

How Bing is different from Google – and why it matters

There are certain things that Bing does better than Google.

For example, doing an image search using Bing is preferable due to the higher quality results. You can search for different layouts and see licensing information for each image without having to figure out where to look. Bing also pioneered infinite scrolling for image search results, though it’s no longer unique – Google now offers this feature, too.

Video search is also more hassle-free with Bing, despite YouTube being a Google brand. When you search for a video on Bing, the results come up as a thumbnail grid. You can then watch the videos without leaving the SERP.

Perhaps the biggest difference between Bing and Google is their amount of influence in a fast-growing subsection of online searching: those done through voice-assisted devices. In 2017, an estimated 35 million Americans used one of these devices at least once a month. Of those millions, more than 70% were Amazon Echo users – and Amazon’s Alexa is powered by Bing.

Five Bing SEO tips to implement for optimization

You will often find that optimizing for Bing SEO is much like optimizing for Google SEO. Both search engines use the BERT algorithm – which means keyword stuffing, manipulative link-building schemes, and other questionable tactics won’t work.

However, there are certain things you can do to take your search engine optimization a notch up with Bing. Below are five tips you can apply to your current marketing initiatives.

1. Claim and list your business on Bing Places

Google has Google My Business, Bing has Bing Places. The goal of these two is similar: to deliver the best and more useful local search results to its users. Claim your business on Bing Places and create a listing to improve your local SEO ranking performance.

Note that Bing rewards websites that put their location details on prominent display. Bing’s algorithm also considers information from third-party sources, such as social media platforms like Facebook. To optimize your Bing SEO presence, make sure you’re ranking in Facebook’s local search engine, too.

2. Improve SEO through Bing Webmaster Tools URL indexing

After claiming your business, use Bing’s Webmaster Tools to index your website.

You will need to sign in to your Bing business account – which may use your Outlook, Hotmail, or Microsoft login – and verify ownership of your website using a back-end XML sitemap.

Like any other search engine, Bing’s algorithm will better handle and understand your content if you employ categories and tags to make your website’s pages more discoverable. Should you work on this, you can expect Bing to deliver better search results and ad experiences involving your brand.

3. Pay extra attention to on-page SEO for Bing

While backlinking still helps with Bing SEO, clever and contextual keyword utilization is much more relevant. To rank for Bing, concentrate your efforts on on-page SEO rather than off-page SEO.

However, certain tricks will work better than others. For instance, Bing seems to prioritize content with exact keyword matching in page titles, meta descriptions, and web content. You may want to sacrifice smooth readability occasionally for long-tail keywords verbatim.

Using keywords in URL slugs, subheadings, and in the first paragraph of your content are also good practices to follow if you want to see your website nearer the top in Bing SERPs.

4. Maintain a genuine online social media presence

Bing’s webmaster guidelines tell us that social signals weigh heavily in its ranking algorithm. What this means is that your social media presence matters more to Bing than it does to Google. We touched on this briefly when we talked about claiming your business on Bing Places.

How your social media performs helps Bing judge the quality of your content. So, make sure you’re not buying likes or follows, or posting without a clear brand voice.

What does Bing mean by “social signals”? These are social media shares and interactions, typically on industry-leading platforms like Twitter and Facebook. However, you also need to match your social media presence to your target audience. Law firms probably won’t have much use for Pinterest or Instagram, for example, but these platforms could be indispensable for photography studios.

5. Consistently produce great content

Make sure that anything you publish is trustworthy, scannable, readable, and well-researched. Lots of related images to illustrate your points throughout the text content will help, too.

Focus on quality and not quantity. Don’t try to maximize your content by splitting it into several short blog posts. In 2020, the ideal blog post length should be between 2,100 and 2,400 words – enough to thoroughly discuss a topic with authority, but not too long that fluff would be inevitable.

Not yet convinced? Here’s why marketers should focus on Bing

Bing, the second most influential search engine in the world, can be a very lucrative channel. You shouldn’t ignore opportunities for increased reach and growth. Besides, Bing SEO tips may often coincide with what you’re already doing for Google SEO.

If you’re ambivalent due to Bing’s runner-up reputation, consider its parent company. Did you know that more than 1.5 billion devices worldwide are powered by Windows, and over 900 million of those use Windows 10? That last part is important because Windows 10 devices direct traffic to their built-in search engine: Bing.

More than 85% of desktop computers run on Windows. When you ask Cortana a question or search from your lock screen, you’re using Bing. Bing also powers search functions with applications like Microsoft Office, Skype, or Outlook.

One of the most overlooked audiences is over 65 million gamers on their Xboxes. Microsoft’s gaming console uses Bing, too. When players pause their games to search for something, they’re typically using Bing and not Google.

Wrapping up: Bing SEO vs. Google SEO

It’s not a good idea to think of optimizing your online presence in terms of Bing SEO vs. Google SEO. As we’ve touched on consistently throughout this piece, Bing is more similar to Google that many realize. Their algorithms may not be the same, but with delicate balancing, it’s not difficult to come up with a strategy that satisfies both Bing and Google.

Any savvy marketer will find it a good idea to get in on both market shares. Despite the low percentage of people using Bing and Yahoo!, you’re still looking at a potential audience numbering in the millions.

Justin Staples is a business entrepreneur who provides companies with results-driven SEO, custom web design, digital marketing, and content development.  He can be found on LinkedIn.

30-second summary:

• Misinformation can be even more harmful than the danger itself, Michael McManus highlights the initiatives search and social giants have and are promoting COVID-19 awareness.
• Google has made some of the biggest changes, modifying the SERPS for COVID-19 related search queries to provide all the needful information people could need.
• Google also made changes to Google My Business to help companies navigate through this difficult time.
• Facebook created a coronavirus information centre that has been added to the top of everyone’s Facebook feed.
• Bing has added a quick link below the search bar on the homepage which on clicking opens the COVID-19 tracker page that has all the information you could ask for about the Coronavirus.  
• Pinterest is making sure they display pins with the right information from internationally-recognized health organizations.
• More details on the initiatives Snapchat, Twitter, and Instagram have taken.

There’s no doubt that the Coronavirus (COVID-19) has affected everyone in one way or another and that we all know that this virus that has shut down most of the world at one point or another isn’t going to go away anytime soon. 

As you can imagine, with such a huge worldwide pandemic happening, there’s a large number of people that are searching for different kinds of information related to the coronavirus. 

For all the searches that are being done on a daily basis and all the news and people talking about the virus, there’s the potential for lots of misinformation about COVID-19 to appear in SERPs and across social media.  

To help combat the sharing of misinformation, some of the major players in both search and social have been able to provide us with the right information at the right time, so that we are not being led to believe the wrong information, that can cause us to panic and worry even more than we already are. 

Search giants and COVID-19 awareness

1. Google

Google has made lots of changes to both their search results and their tools to help with getting people the right information about the coronavirus as well as to help make things easy for people working from home and for businesses to be able to update their clients on a company’s status during this unprecedented time. 

One of the biggest changes that Google has made to help spread awareness about the COVID-19 situation is how they have changed the SERPS when you do a search related to the coronavirus, Google will display all the information you need about the virus, from the number of cases for your given country and the world as well maps, headlines and a very well labelled “ COVID-19 alert” in red on the left-hand side that has links that open up a “zero-click” search box with the relevant information from the CDC. This also changes the SERP to correspond with the link that was clicked. 

Google also made changes to Google My Business to help companies navigate through this difficult time. You are now able to set your business to “temporarily closed” without it having an effect on your site’s local rankings. Google is also letting businesses know that they should update their business hours as well as to post your COVID-19 updates.

Just keep in mind that your Google My Business account may not be functioning as expected under the COVID-19 strain and that many of your updates might take considerably longer than normal. 

Google has been working really hard at making sure that the right COVID-19 information is being found and to help with this, the Google Search team is helping official health organizations get more visibility in search with a new best practices guide as well as through a private support group. 

As if that wasn’t enough, Google is also publishing coronavirus mobility reports that allow you to see how your community is moving around differently due to COVID-19 and how the pandemic has affected your area. These reports get their data from Google’s different products, such as Youtube, as well as from users’ location history. 

Google mentions the following – “These Community Mobility Reports aim to provide insights into what has changed in response to policies aimed at combating COVID-19. The reports chart movement trends over time by geography, across different categories of places such as retail and recreation, groceries and pharmacies, parks, transit stations, workplaces, and residential.”

So head on over to the site and download the coronavirus mobility reports to see insights on your city. 

2. Facebook

Facebook is doing its part to help with providing COVID-19 information and awareness by launching its coronavirus information centre. The new information centre has been added to the top of everyone’s Facebook feed.

Along with the Coronavirus (COVID-19) information centre, Facebook has also created a Coronavirus (COVID-19) information hub for media that has a wealth of information.

Other initiatives that Facebook have done and are doing to help spread COVID-19 awareness: 

• Announced the ability to publish hours updates and service changes on Facebook pages. 
• Launched a Covid-19 resource hub specifically for advertisers.

3. Bing

With almost seven percent of the search engine market share, Bing has a big platform to help spread COVID-19 awareness and they have done exactly that. They have added a quick link below the search bar on the homepage. 

When clicked, you are taken to their newly created COVID-19 tracker page that has all the information you could ask for about the Coronavirus.  

This new page allows you to see the total confirmed cases globally and a breakdown of the active cases, recovered cases, and sadly fatal cases. You can then choose a country and you will be able to see how the virus is spreading in all the cities and or states of that respective country. You will also get up to date news related to that country as well.

The page is continuously being updated with data that is collected from CDC, WHO, ECDC, Wikipedia, 24/7 Wall St., and BNO News.

Other initiatives that Bing have done and are doing to help spread COVID-19 awareness include:

• A hub dedicated to explaining the Bing Places features and attributes businesses can use during COVID-19. 
• Partnered with GoFundMe to integrate it into Bing Places. 
• Added a CDC coronavirus self-checker chatbot to search results pages.

4. Snapchat

Snapchat has worked with the World Health Organization to create filters that display facts on how to stay safe and social distance during the pandemic. Snapchat has also created new lenses in a bid to encourage social distancing during the coronavirus pandemic. 

They have also created a COVID-19 business resource centre to share resources to help their partners navigate this uncertain time in light of COVID-19. 

5. Twitter

Twitter has also created a COVID-19 hub with the goal of helping people find reliable information, connect with others, and follow what’s happening in real-time. You can head over to to the hub to get comprehensive information on how Twitter is helping spread COVID-19 awareness and how they are providing guidance to help businesses.  

Along with their COVID-19 hub, they’ve also created a great resource on crisis communication for brands on Twitter.  

6. Instagram

Instagram is doing its part to help spread COVID-19 awareness and have taken steps to help people access accurate information, stay safe, and stay connected. These new features were designed to help encourage users to stay home, stay connected, and for people to be able to access accurate information during the Coronavirus pandemic.  These new features are the “Stay Home” sticker to help promote social distancing and the new video feature “Co-Watching” that allows you to view Instagram posts together with your friends over video chat. 

To help people get relevant and up-to-date information and resources, Instagram intends to show more information from @WHO and local health ministries at the top of Instagram’s Feed. You may have already noticed the message that says, “Help Prevent the Spread of Coronavirus: See the latest information from the World Health Organization so you can help prevent the spread of COVID-19. — Go to who.int”

Other initiatives that Instagram have done and are doing to help spread COVID-19 awareness:

• More educational resources in Instagram search results. 
• Adding stickers to promote accurate information.
• Removing COVID-19 accounts from recommendations, unless posted by a credible health organization. 
• Rolling out the donation sticker in more countries and helping people find relevant nonprofits to support. 

7. Pinterest

Pinterest is also doing their part to help spread COIVD-19 awareness and making sure that they are displaying pins with the right information. In order to make sure that they are only showing pins with the right information, they are only displaying search results to Pins from internationally-recognized health organizations.

They have also created a one-pager guide for brands with suggestions for creating content that helps Pinners cope with this extraordinary time.

Other initiatives that Pinterest have done and are doing to help spread COVID-19 awareness: 

• A custom search experience featuring results from experts 
• Prohibiting ads that claim to offer cures or treatments or that are looking to exploit the crisis 
• A banner across the site that directs to WHO facts 
• An easy way to report health misinformation through the “health misinformation” option on Pins. We’re removing any misinformation we find about COVID-19 because it violates our health misinformation policy (which has been in place since 2017) 
• Stay safe, stay inspired board for even more ideas. 
• Collection of emotional wellbeing activities to help relax and feel better with content from emotional health experts 

Free tools 

It’s great to see companies big and small come through in a big way to help businesses out during this difficult time. There are lots of companies that are offering a wide range of services, products, consulting services, charitable donations, etc.. We have put together a small list of companies in the search and marketing industry who are  

Unbounce

When it comes to designing beautiful landing pages that convert more, Unbounce is the company to go to. Not only are they the giants in landing page conversions, but they have also really come through during this global pandemic, by offering their essential plan for free to anyone in healthcare, education, nonprofit, or government as well as offering free coaching and strategy sessions with their success managers and so much more. 

Google

Along with all that they provide via GMB, Google is helping remote workers as well as students by providing their video conferencing service for free. Google Meet, is Google’s premium video conferencing product that you had access to if you had a paid G Suite account.

Google is opening up access to Meet to free users gradually, so keep on checking their site to see when it will be available in your area. 

In addition to all the efforts, products, and services that Google’s doing, they are also providing $340 million in Google Ads credits to all SMBs. You do not have to do anything to get the credits, you just simply have to have an active account over the past year. The credits will then appear in your Ads account. 

Facebook

Facebook has created a Small Business Grants program that offers $100 million in cash grants and advertising credits for up to 30,000 small businesses in over 30 countries. 

Hubspot

HubSpot is a great company that provides a wide range of marketing, sales, and customer service tools and software as well as completely free CRM. HubSpot is doing its part in responding to COVID-19 and its economic impact by reducing the cost of its Starter Growth Suite from $112 USD to $50 USD per month.  

They are also making their paid Meetings functionality, Quotes, E-Sign, and 1:1 Video tools available for free for 90 days from activation. 

Moz

Moz is a great site that offers lots of insights from industry experts as well as providing great SEO tools. Moz is providing its Academy Courses for Free till May 31st. If you haven’t done so already, you should head over to Moz and sign up for their academy courses. There’s something there for everyone. 

Mailchimp

Mailchimp is another great example of a company stepping up to help businesses in a time of need, by offering up to three months free service for businesses with 25 employees or less in the restaurant, travel, brick-and-mortar retail, healthcare, and more industries.

Mailchimp is also generously giving away custom domains free for five years along with their free website builder. This will help small businesses by giving them two fewer things to worry about during the COVID-19 crisis and help them get up and running online quickly.

You can find out all about theses offers and more that Mailchimp is doing to help out by heading over to Mailchimp’s Statement on COVID‑19.

As if that wasn’t enough, Mailchimp is also providing free standard Mailchimp accounts for eligible public service organizations.

Hootsuite

Hootsuite is another great example of a company stepping up to help businesses during the COVID-19 pandemic. They are giving away their Professional plan to small businesses and nonprofit organizations until July 1, 2020, to help them stay connected with their customers and communities.

Hootsuite is also launching a series of free online workshops designed to show how brands can build better processes for crisis management. They are also working on a brand new virtual conference. 

Similarweb

Similarweb is well known for all the data that they have across all markets and industries, that allow you to gather market intelligence to help you understand different trends, track and grow your digital market share. They have used their data and insights and have created a ‘Coronavirus Data and Insights Hub’ that offers great insights on how COVID-19 is impacting business as well as to help you understand how customers’ needs are changing due to the pandemic. 

Conclusion 

It’s great to see all these companies both big and small all come together during these unprecedented times, by creating COVID-19 awareness so that we can get the information that we are looking for right away and not have to search over and over only to give up and not find what we are looking for or to end up getting the wrong information, offering their services and their time for free to help those in need. 

We are all in this together, stay healthy, and stay safe.  

Michael McManus is CMO/SEO Director for SignatureWEB.

30-second summary:

• If you think optimizing your content for Google is tough, then you‘re going to be amazed by how many factors you‘ll have to consider when optimizing your writing for multiple search engines. 
• Two benefits of doing so can be seen in local SEO and voice search.
• UK Linkology’s Content Marketing Manager, Hannah Stevenson walks you through the complex process to understand and implement how you can optimize content for search engines beyond Google – Bing, DuckDuckGo, Ask.com, and more.

Optimizing your content for just one search engine can be a challenge, as we‘ve still got no idea what Google expects. 

There is a range of different tools out there designed to help, but they‘re all merely making educated guesses. To use them effectively, you need to be assessing what they tell you and, where possible, using more than one metric to evaluate your site‘s success and boost its rankings. 

If you think optimizing your content for Google is tough, then you‘re going to be amazed by how many factors you‘ll have to consider when optimizing your writing for multiple search engines.  

Read on to find out why it‘s important that you don‘t overlook alternative search engines and how you can include them in your optimization process.  

Why you need to optimize content for a range of search engines 

Google has the largest market share of any search engine in the world, so, understandably, most writers and SEOs focus on optimizing for it. 

However, there are a wide variety of alternative search engines out there. Bing, Microsoft‘s search engine offering, has 5.53% of this market. This might seem like a small percentage, but when you consider that the digital population around the world is in the billions, it is still a significant number of users that you‘re overlooking by only optimizing your content for Google. 

A percentage of users of Bing will have it set as their prefered search tool due to the browser or device they are using. Microsoft favours its own tools, which is why Bing is the default search engine on Windows phones, tablets and computers.  

Some developers have deals to make certain search engines their default. Many of these deals involve Google, but in some cases, the titan of the search engine market is usurped.  

For example, AOL chose Bing over Google in 2015, meaning that Bing is the default engine on AOL browsers. While this might not seem significant, many users will not bother to change their settings, and simply use the default search engine, meaning if this option is not Google, then other search engines will rise in popularity.  

Additionally, some smaller search engines target specific demographics, such as Ecosia, which is marketed at environmentally-conscious users and donates money towards planting trees with every search that users make.  

For users who are concerned about privacy and data storage, DuckDuckGo is a search engine that promises not to store information and block out hidden tracking software.  

As such, if you are targeting these specific demographics, then you need to make sure that you optimize your content for these tools.  

Research the search engines on the market 

Before you start optimizing your content, you need to check out the search engines on offer and work out which ones are the most relevant to your website.  

Some of the key search engines on the market, not including Google, are: 

• Bing: As mentioned earlier, Bing is Microsoft’s search engine, which has a strong market share.  
• Yahoo!: Powered by Bing, Yahoo! Uses the same technology, but is a different platform, meaning that you can optimize for this solution using the same techniques you use for Bing.  
• Ecosia: An eco-friendly search engine that promotes itself by offering to donate money towards tree planting efforts for every search users make on its platform.  
• DuckDuckGo: A privacy-focused search engine that does not track user data, making it harder to optimize for and less-informative than other tools.  
• Qwant: Another search engine that’s dedicated to privacy, Qwant has it’s own indexing engine and doesn’t track user activity.  
• Ask.com: Using a question and answer format, Ask.com providers users with answers to any queries they may have by showing them relevant pages and content.  

Look beyond Google Analytics 

The first step towards to optimize content for alternative search engines is to find new sources of traffic information.

Most webmasters use Google Analytics to review their traffic and site information, but this platform only shows clicks from Google searches. 

If you want to find out where you‘re getting all of your page visits from, then you‘ll need to find alternative ways to review your traffic.  

Analytics tools such as SEMrush, SimilarWeb and Ahrefs all show you where your traffic is coming from, as well as offering a wide range of additional tools such as keyword searches and top page analysis. As such, they‘re definitely worth investing in if you want to boost your site, both on Google and a range of other search engines.   

Follow them on social media to stay updated 

One of the easiest ways you can learn about the latest developments in the way these alternative search engines operate, and how you can optimize content around them is to stay updated.  

As such, you should follow them on social media and sign up to their newsletters to read the latest developments and advice that they‘re offering to users and content creators.  

Keeping tabs on so many different search engines can be a challenge, particularly if you‘re trying to optimize your content around several different tools.  

You‘ll be able to get all of the updates as and when they‘re released. You‘ll also receive expert commentary on what these developments mean for you and your content.  

Local SEO benefits some alternative search engines

Some search engines offer tailored local insight, meaning that you can use local SEO practices to target these platforms. 

For example, Bing offers Bing Places, a directory of local companies, and is committed to offering users search results tailored around their location.  

As Yahoo! is powered by Bing, boosting your reach on one platform will translate to growth on the other.  

Bing‘s dedication to sharing local search results means that, if you use local search terms in your content, you will be more likely to rank on this platform.  

Flash is Bing‘s favourite

Bing also has technical preferences, with a focus on Flash and Silverlight based applications: 

Rich Internet Applications (RIAs), such as Microsoft Silverlight and Adobe Flash Player, can improve the aesthetic appearance or the functional ability of a site for end-users. However, the way these technologies are typically implemented often causes problems with the ability of search engine bots to crawl and fetch any meaningful data from the site. 

Sites extensively employing JavaScript and AJAX technologies can also cause the same problems for search. This is because search bots are primarily readers of the text. It is much more difficult to parse and derive indexable, relevant content from graphic and multimedia content. As a result, sites who implement these technologies without regard to search bot accessibility often unexpectedly see their search rankings drop off (from the search bot perspective, the site simply has little-to-no indexable content available, which adversely affects its relevance to the site’s main theme).

As such, you need to try to move your site onto RIAs where possible and optimize the meta tags and description tags to help you achieve strong results on Bing.  

Ask.com is optimized in a similar way to voice search

Voice search is one of the fastest-growing trends in the SEO market currently, with so many consumers now turning to their smart devices and virtual assistants to give them the information they need. 

When optimizing content for voice search, the key is to answer questions, as the majority of verbal searches are questions. 

This is because voice search queries use natural voice commands, as users are speaking rather than typing. Google has identified that almost 70% of searches on Google Assistant are performed in natural language, rather than the keywords that you often find in written searches.  

It‘s more natural to ask a question than it is to yell keywords towards your device. As such, optimizing your content for voice search involves including questions and providing the answers.  

Creating content with question and answers in it not only helps you to boost your voice search results, but also helps you to optimize your content for Ask.com. 

As Ask.com focuses on providing users with the answers to questions, by also focusing on this format, you can kill two birds with one stone and optimize your writing for both Ask.com and voice search.  

Never sacrifice quality and relevance

The key to search engine visibility and increased traffic will always be quality and relevance. No matter what tools you use and what search engines you choose to target, you should always focus on creating readable content that grabs your reader‘s attention.  

Always make sure that your content is thoroughly proofread and that you haven‘t stuffed too many keywords into obscure positions. If you start every sentence with your target keywords, then search engines will pick up on this and may penalize your site.  

A Google penalty is a serious issue, but a penalty from any other search engine can also cause you major problems.  

Tools such as Grammarly or Hemingway Editor can help with readability, while SEO Surfer can help you understand keyword density and content layout. It should be mentioned that SEO Surfer takes much of its data from Google, but the tool can be useful for spreading out your keywords to help boost your rankings in a variety of search engines.  

Conclusion  

At the end of the day, content remains king in the SEO market. Creating quality content needs to remain your key focus, with optimizing it and getting it in front of your target audience your second priority.  

As with any business decision, when you‘re optimizing your content, you should try to spread your risk. Aim to create content that is valuable not only for Google but a range of other search engines too.   

Hannah Stevenson is the Content Marketing Manager at UK Linkology. 

30-second summary:

• Let’s admit it, the line between paid search and organic search is getting blurred.
• A lot of businesses simply assume that paying more than the competition assures a piece of the most trusted real estate in Google and Bing’s SERPs.
• While an aggressive paid strategy can certainly get you a piece of it, too often brands overlook the equally important defensive strategy of paid search monitoring.
• CEO of BrandVerity, Dave Naffziger, helps you learn the essential techniques for maintaining your position one in paid search listings.

What’s the best way to ensure your brand is at the top of the Search Engine Results Page (SERP) for a branded search? For many, the answer seems pretty straightforward — simply pay more than the competition. And while an aggressive paid strategy can certainly get you a piece of the most trusted real estate in search, too often brands overlook the equally important defensive strategy of paid search monitoring.

With brands investing unprecedented amounts into paid search, and the line between organic and paid listings becoming even more blurred, it’s more important than ever for organizations to keep a watchful eye over their campaigns in order to defend them from unscrupulous third parties, infringing ads, poor customer experience and resource drain.

Understanding the basics

On the surface, paid search monitoring is what it sounds like. It involves actively watching to see who is bidding, how often they are advertising, and when infringing ads are identified, removing them by notifying search engines or contacting the party responsible for the ads. 

However, unless you are well-versed in search engine trademark rules, it can be tricky to tell the difference between an infringing and compliant ad. And in many cases, an ad may be allowed by search engines but can run counter to a brand’s partnership and affiliate agreements.

All major search engines allow brand bidding — where a partner or even a competitor bids on your branded terms. The search engines also permit trademark use in paid ads that go to legitimate resellers or informational websites.

The two main rules that limit trademark term use in paid search

1. Trademark terms may not be used in the text or title of an ad

Trademark terms may not be used in the text or title of an ad if the ad takes the user to a site where it is unclear if the advertiser is a reseller or an informational site.

In the example below, the Yahoo search engine is using the VRBO trademark to divert traffic. Someone could easily click on the ad thinking they are going to VRBO. But the ad takes you to a Yahoo search engine results page, with more ads, thus providing a poor user experience for the consumer looking to book through VRBO. 

This is a textbook example of search arbitrage, which happens when an ad primarily leads to additional ads. The arbitrager pockets the difference between what they paid for the traffic and what they get paid for the ad clicks. This type of ad should be submitted to the search engine for a take-down.

2. You can’t use trademark terms in ad texts or titles in a competitive way

In the example below, Joss & Main, a competitor to homeware brand Restoration Hardware, bid on the term “restorationhardware.” Customers looking for Restoration Hardware’s homepage may mistakenly click on the ‘Joss & Main advertisement’ at the top of the SERP and find themselves on a different website than they intended.

This is the type of competitive use of a trademark that Google and Bing don’t allow, and this ad would also be subject to removal.

Taking steps to protect your position

Once you understand what trademark infringements look like, you need to establish a process to find them. Teams can do this manually by searching a list of priority keywords across several search engines once a week, and then contacting the trademark abusers directly or submitting take-down requests manually to search engines.

While this is certainly a good step to take, since many infringers use evasive techniques like geotargeting (running ads in locations where the advertiser believes the merchant won’t see them) and dayparting (setting ads to run during times of day when they believe the merchant won’t monitor them), manual monitoring can be time-consuming and ineffective. This is where automated solutions can help find and take action on trademark infringements at scale.

Another critical step that can help you defend your numero uno spot

Another critical step that teams can take is establishing and enforcing clear partner and affiliate agreements. Documenting what you will and won’t allow these various parties to do will help you stay consistent in how you handle violations and will reduce trademark infringement and affiliate abuse.

Protecting your investments and relationships

Branded keywords are the most valuable and highest converting search traffic, making them a tempting target for partners, competitors, and third parties to run ads on. However, when they don’t play by the rules bad actors can drive your cost-per-click through the roof and run your clickthrough rate into the ground. Aside from impacting your campaign ROI, these actions also negatively impact your customer experience. 

Search is the front door to your brand online. How customers find you on the SERP impacts the overall customer experience, and ultimately, your bottom line. It’s simple. Customers who can easily find your brand after a branded keyword search are more likely to buy your products and services, while those that unwittingly click on a competitor or partner’s website at the top of the page are less likely to buy directly from you.

By taking the appropriate measures to defend their SERP position, brands can optimize online investments, strengthen relationships with good partners and safeguard their customers’ online experiences.

Dave Naffziger is the CEO of leading online brand protection company BrandVerity.

Search engine optimization (SEO) is a technique used to assure that customers searching for a product or service can easily find a company’s website on search engines such as Google. Just as a physical location is essential for brick-and-mortar stores, search engine rankings are essential in driving walk-in traffic to a website.

How potential or qualified customers find websites for a product or service

1. Direct traffic

A user finds a website by typing the web address directly into a browser or by clicking on a bookmark or an email link. These are typically customers that are familiar with the company and are maybe repeat visitors.

2. Referrals

Users are directed to websites by clicking on a link from another website. For example, linking from a Facebook page to a corporate website would produce referral traffic. Ideally, referrals will be qualified customers possessing a desire to buy products from the website they are referred to.

3. Search engines

Analyze web content and create a ranking of websites that most likely will correspond to keywords that a customer uses to search for information. For example, typing the keywords “search engine optimization” in a Google search will provide a list of websites that provide information or services dealing with SEO.

Generally, a company has more control over direct or referral traffic than over search engine traffic. In addition, direct and referral traffic is influenced more by an organization’s offline marketing. SEO seeks to provide a strategy for improving a website ranking resulting in increased traffic to that website.

Two types of search engine results that appear

1. Pay per click (PPC)

These results are usually prominently displayed on top or on the side of the search results. To attain these listings, companies enroll in services like Google Adwords to budget resources into certain keywords and pay a fee whenever a customer clicks on the link. A well-orchestrated PPC campaign is the quickest way to drive qualified traffic to a website.

2. Organic or natural results

These are the rank-ordered results provided below the PPC results. These results are attained on the merits of the website and are not purchased. However, since most customers will not look at several pages of search results, a high organic placement, preferably in the top three positions, is necessary to succeed in driving qualified traffic to a website.

How search engines rank websites

The criteria used to rank websites in search results vary by the search engine (Google, Yahoo, Bing, and the others) which are constantly evolving. Although these criteria are not publicized, general strategies applied consistently over time will increase website rankings. Despite promises offered by some SEO companies, attaining a high search engine ranking will not happen overnight.

Although the exact formulas are not widely publicized, search engines provide high ranks to websites that are relevant, important, trustworthy, authoritative, and popular. Any strategy that seeks to increase these five criteria, will ultimately improve your search engine optimization.

Five non-technical strategies for SEO

1. Improve relevance by writing better web copy

Writing better web copy that focuses on how a product meets customer needs will help to improve your search engine rankings. In addressing the needs of the customer, web copy will naturally be filled with rich keywords. Avoid writing copy specifically designed to increase web rankings. Ultimately a website needs to be written for customers and not web rankings.

2. Improve by increasing the number and quality of inbound links

Search engines look at both the number and the quality of those links when determining rankings. By registering with web directories like DMOZ or getting referral traffic from high traffic sites like Wikipedia, websites can improve site visibility and perceived importance. Companies can increase links to their site by regularly providing new and entertaining content. Providing content including videos, games, and other interactive features that people want to share with their friends is a great way to encourage other websites to link to yours.

3. Become trustworthy by being ethical

Questionable tactics like providing pages with long lists of keywords and little usable content will eventually lead to penalties by search engines. Encouraging trust among customers, just like in brick-and-mortar business, is important in increasing sales and search engine ranking. Provide customers with a contact page and give them the opportunity to comment on products and services received.

4. Become an authority by networking

Develop a reputation as an authority with a product or service by using networking sites such as LinkedIn or by creating blogs and topic relevant articles or whitepapers. Over time customers will begin to associate the company with being an expert on the products and services it offers. Not only will this perceived authority increase traffic to the website, but it will also ultimately increase search rankings.

5. Increase popularity by encouraging repeat visitors

Marketing is a long-term proposition aimed at meeting and satisfying customer need. Satisfying customer need will encourage repeat visitors and repeat visitors will increase traffic. By providing relevant, interactive content that is demanded by customers, the website will become more popular and ranking will increase over time.

When using nontechnical techniques, sound marketing principles will ultimately lead to increased web rankings. If you’re looking for technical SEO strategies you can use Google Webmaster Tools.

Got any strategies you would like to talk about? Share them in the comments.

It’s accelerating as results grow ever richer and more personalized, search engines more numerous and specialized, and searchers increasingly expect to be able to summon answers whenever, wherever and however they like.

Though it may not always feel like it, none of this happened overnight. If we look at some of the key milestones in the evolution of search, we can get insight into how we got to where we are now. Let’s skip ahead a bit and start with Google in the early 2000s.

• The early 2000s: Google takes on black hat SEO methods by de-legitimizing and even penalizing unethical tactics like keyword stuffing and questionable link-building practices. At the same time, we see the very beginnings of localized search results.
• The mid to late 2000s: Google begins to refine the search experience with universal search, which incorporates results from sources like websites, social media, images, video, and news in its SERPs. Google Suggest launches, which offers related search phrases in the search results. Microsoft launches Bing.
• The early 2010s: Google breaks SEO briefly with algorithm changes that emphasize quality, user-focused content. Any vestigial gaming of the system is dead. Optimization is very much alive, but the gap narrows between content that Google’s algorithm sees as high quality and content that humans see as high quality. Localization gets a boost, and we begin to see zero-click searches.
• The mid-2000s to today: Search explodes. Google begins to demote content that is not mobile-friendly, then rolls out mobile-first indexing. YouTube becomes the second largest search engine behind Google. Amazon ranks first for product searches. We enter the frontier of voice search.
• Today and beyond: SEO has evolved and has proven out as a key business performance driver. Meanwhile, search is ubiquitous, increasingly vertical, and enormously topical.

SEO now

SEO is still very much about maximizing the effectiveness of organic content to drive traffic and demand, but its role in the organization has expanded and so has the workload along with it.

How SEO is used in the modern enterprise

SEO methods and insights are supporting strategy and decision making beyond website content. The broader use of SEO intelligence is a natural progression in the evolution of search. After all, SEO research can reveal a lot about consumer intent. For content, paid search, social media, and email marketers, knowing what the target audience is looking for makes it easier to tailor the message, product or service to them.

A 2018 survey of UK marketers reinforces the perception of SEO as an essential (88% of respondents) and effective (79% of respondents) part of the marketing imperative, but the survey also highlights the difficulty marketers and SEO specialists have when it comes to keeping up with the pace of change in search. More than two-thirds of respondents (70%) incorrectly identified a bogus Google algorithm change as being real. (Source: Zazzle Media)

How SEO is executed in the modern enterprise

For most search marketers, the daily work of SEO is a significant undertaking. Add to that the fact that 75% of marketers are regularly using at least four different tools or data sources to execute their SEO strategy.

SEO in 2019 and beyond: SEO goes single-platform and real-time

To date, SEO has been largely a reactive business function. In 2019, look for search to become not only reactive but predictive. Two shifts will drive this:

1. A shift from point solutions to platform SEO
2. The enablement of true, real-time SEO

The shift from point solutions to platform SEO

The time-consuming and somewhat disjointed nature of SEO execution for most search marketers is not surprising given the rapid pace of change in search. It is also not sustainable over the long term. Search is only going to evolve more quickly. Keeping up on all the changes, mastering new and additional tools to manage SEO, and finding the time to incorporate more and more diverse data sources into an already overtaxed SEO routine is prohibitive.

To see where the practice of SEO is headed, we can look at how leading brands do it now. BrightEdge Instant (disclosure, customer) empowers the next generation of search marketers to use real-time insights and take action to optimize content all within one unified platform, so they can effectively:

1. Speed up the busy work of SEO by
   • Streamlining or automating repetitive SEO tasks
   • Integrating disparate data sources and adding immense value by, effectively, crowdsourcing otherwise unavailable data
2. Turn data into insight by employing AI and deep learning to organize data and generate meaningful recommendations
3. Keep up with major and minor changes in search for their users and innovate accordingly

For SEO to be effective it needs to be efficient. Moving from managing multiple SEO point solutions, sourcing data from numerous sources in numerous formats, and analyzing data in Excel to single-platform SEO solution creates efficiency that marketers can no longer ignore.

The enablement of true, real-time SEO

What we know today as real-time SEO is, in actuality, the same, rearward-looking SEO with a shortened timeframe. SEO evolution, like change, is constant and the breakthrough for SEO has begun with live, real-time data that right-now drives keyword and ranking research, and produces in-the-moment recommendations.

Marketers will be able to see trends as they are developing rather than once they’re established. This level of insight will enable them to predictively produce or optimize content to capitalize on the interest that’s coming. This ability to displace competitors pre-emptively will change the face of search forever.

Andy Betts is a chief marketer, consultant, and digital hybrid with more than 20 years of experience in digital, technology and marketing working across London, Europe, New York, and San Francisco. He can be found on twitter @andybetts1.

An interesting report recently released by Uberall sought to address that exact question. For as much as we talk about the importance of voice search, and even how to optimize for it — are people actually doing it?

In this report, researchers analyzed 73,000 business locations (using the Boston Metro area as their sample set), across 37 different voice search directories, as well as across SMBs, mid-market, and enterprise.

They looked at a number of factors including accuracy of address, business hours, phone number, name, website, and zip code, as well as accuracy across various voice search directories.

In order, this was how they weighted the importance of a listing’s information:

And pictured below are “the 37 most important voice search directories” that they accounted for.

Uberall analysts did note, however, that Google (search + maps), Yelp, and Bing together represent about 90% of the score’s weight.

How ready are businesses for voice search?

The ultimate question. Here, we’ll dive into a few key findings from this report.

1. Over 96% of all business locations fail to list their business information correctly

When looking just at the three primary listings locations (Google, Yelp, Bing), Uberall found that only 3.82% of business locations had no critical errors.

In other words, more than 96% of all business locations failed to list their business information correctly.

Breaking down those 3.82% of perfect business location listings, they were somewhat evenly split across enterprise, mid-market, and SMB, with enterprise having the largest share as one might expect.

2. The four most common types of listing errors

In their analysis, here’s the breakdown of most common types of missing or incorrect information:

• Opening hours: 978,305 errors (almost half of all listings)
• Website: 710,113 errors (almost one-third of all listings)
• Location name: 510,010 errors (almost one-quarter of all listings)
• Street: 421,048 errors (almost one-fifth of all listings)

3. Which types of businesses are most likely to be optimized for voice search?

Industries that were found to be most voice search ready included:

• Dentists
• Health food
• Home improvement
• Criminal attorneys
• Dollar stores

Industries that were found to be least voice search ready included:

• Consumer protection organizations
• Congressional representatives
• Business attorneys
• Art galleries
• Wedding services

Not much surprise on the most-prepared industries relying heavily on people being able to find their physical locations. Perhaps a bit impressed that criminal attorneys landed so high on the list. Surprising that art galleries ranked second to last, but perhaps this helps explain decline in traffic of late.

And as ever, we can be expectedly disappointed by the technological savvy of congressional representatives.

What’s the cost of businesses not being optimized for voice search?

The next question, of course, is: how much should we care? Uberall spent a nice bit of their report discussing statistics about the history of voice search, how much it’s used, and its predicted growth.

Interestingly, they also take a moment to fact check the popular “voice will be 50% of all search by 2020” statistic. Apparently, this was taken from an interview with Andrew Ng (co-founder of Coursera, formerly lead at both Google Brain and Baidu) and was originally referring to the growth of a combined voice and image search, specifically via Baidu in China.

1. On average, adults spend 10x more hours on their phones than they did in 2018

This data was compiled from a number of charts from eMarketer, showing overall increase in digital media use from 2008 to 2017 (and we can imagine is even higher now). Specifically, we see how most all of the growth is driven just from mobile.

The connection here, of course, is that mobile devices are one of the most popular devices for voice search, second only perhaps to smart home devices.

2. About 21% of respondents were using voice search every week

According to this study, 21% of respondents were using voice search every week. 57% of respondents said they never used voice search. And about 14% seem to have tried it once or twice and not looked back.

In general, it seems people are a bit polarized — either it’s a habit or it’s not.

Regardless, 21% is a sizable number of consumers (though we don’t have information about how many of those searches convert to purchases).

And it seems the number is on the rise: the recent report from voicebot.ai showed that smart speaker ownership grew by nearly 40% from 2018 to 2019, among US adults.

Overall, the cost of not being optimized for voice search may not be sky high yet. But at the same time, it’s probably never too soon to get your location listings in order and provide accurate information to consumers.

You might also like:

• Voice search optimization guide: Six steps for 2019
• Yext Brain and the future of conversational AI: Q&A with CMO Jeff Rohrs (ClickZ)
• What can we learn from voice search in 2018?
• How to optimize your local business for voice search
• Voice search and local SEO: How to get started?
• The comprehensive guide to voice search keyword research

Oath had been renamed Verizon Media and Yahoo Gemini had switched to the name “Oath Ad Manager” only recently but Verizon (who agreed to the acquisition of Yahoo Inc. in 2016) are clearly trying to consolidate and stabilize the decade-long crumbling of the Yahoo empire. Regardless of the ultimate life expectancy of much of the Yahoo portfolio, the status quo was always on borrowed time.

The key question for agencies and advertisers is, what will it mean in the management of your search advertising?

Impact

The whole handover from Yahoo to Bing Ads is going to be far shorter than version 1.0 of this arrangement, which was implemented around 11 years ago. Only two weeks were allotted from the first blush to full transition, which is now, at the end of March.

The biggest impact here will be in the advertiser workflow. Obviously, you have one less platform but you also have a far better platform set as Bing and Google are very similar now. Bing will, thanks to its increase in traffic data, be able to introduce smart, query-level bidding solutions approximate to Google in a shorter timeframe than before. This will be great news for those seeking efficiency and less time spent on the Bing platform.

From an account management point of view, your year-on-year reviews are going to be more complicated. But you’re also going to have one less budget to forecast. So you win some, you lose some.

Scope

Bing Ads will account for around 35% of search traffic in the US. In international markets where Yahoo is a bigger search engine than Bing, there will be a huge jump.

Since responsive ads (native ads by another name) are in Bing Ads just as they are in Oath/Gemini, your creative will continue to deliver on websites but at a higher volume in a single account.

Search will be easier to control since Oath/Gemini had a different set of options and features, and had very different ad types.

The transition checklist

• Assuming you keep your budgets in place on Yahoo and boost your Bing budgets to cope with the impending traffic influx, you should be fine. No action will be needed on Yahoo since the ads will stop serving automatically.
• Setting up Bing conversion tracking on your website becomes even more of a priority if you haven’t already.
• To counteract the year-on-year comparison issues, just ensure you download all of your Yahoo data, and you should be fine.
• If you’re not particularly familiar with Bing (or are not on it) then this is the time to get to know it much better. And, frankly, if you know Google Ads, it shouldn’t be a stretch. However, there is an excellent Academy site you should look over and, with this Yahoo development, achieving an accreditation has even more value.
• The good news is that if you have yet to use Bing Ads, the process for getting started is way easier than you may imagine. You can simply create a Bing Ads account and then import your Google account wholesale with the least amount of fuss. There are a few elements you’ll need to tweak once the content is imported (such as bidding strategies and bids in general) but you’ll probably find it to be a relatively painless process.

Bing growth

A big takeaway from the last year or so is that Bing is heavily on a growth trajectory. Here are a few data points:

• Since 2015, they have grown US search share from 31% to 34% in 2018 (includes Yahoo/AOL)
• Internationally, Bing has grown at a faster pace (UK: 17% to 20%, FR: 11% to 16%)
• Bing Ads now has access to LinkedIn audiences (currently beta but launching fully soon)
• Bing is an OS-level search engine across not just Windows but increasingly popular Microsoft computing devices, plus Xbox.
• Bing is the voice search engine on Amazon Alexa and the latter’s diversification of Echo and Alexa-compatible devices for presence all over your home and in your car is another crucial factor for the future.
• Bing Ads covering all of Yahoo search ads (and, of course, powering Yahoo organic search) this year is a significant cherry on top of all of this.

Conclusion

Be prepared to work harder on optimizing your Bing accounts and you should see more traffic and sales than ever (especially if you never before waded into the murky Yahoo Gemini waters).

Steve Plimmer is the Head of Account Management US at ESV Digital. He can be found on Twitter @SPlimmer_ESV.

When it comes to B2B and lead generation strategies that are no different, in fact, it’s probably a bit more challenging when you can’t see the direct conversions or e-commerce revenue.

As such, I thought it would only be fair to share six of my favorite tips to help you get the best out of your paid search activity when working in the B2B world.

Six tips for B2B paid search success

1. Tracking & attribution

Without a doubt, the hardest thing about running a B2B strategy is tracking and attributing your leads, clients, and sales back to specific campaigns and keywords, but for me, this is where it gets most exciting.

When working on an e-commerce strategy as long as your tracking is set up correctly, you can see your data quite clearly and you can understand where your sales and revenue are coming from. But with a lead gen strategy, you need to be able to collect data from multiple sources and bring it back together to get a clear picture of performance.

Whilst there are many ways you can track your paid search performance, I prefer to append the UTM (Urchin Tracking Module) information onto URLs, if you’re not sure how to do this I suggest checking out Google’s URL Builder Tool as your starting point.

The reason I like this approach is that you can get your developers to pull this data through the website form completions and then pull this into your CRM. This allows you to begin the attribution process.

It’s easy and, to be totally honest, lazy to optimize a lead gen PPC account based on conversions in Google Ads. Looking at this data does not take into account whether you actually made any revenue from any given lead.

This is where you can get onto the attribution bit.

Your aim should be to pull a report from your CRM, detailing the leads generated from your paid search campaigns, with the UTM data from URLs and the lead status i.e. closed, lost, ongoing and any associated revenue.

This view will allow you to see what you actually got from the campaigns you are running. You are then able to optimize your account based on the campaigns that generate you the highest quality leads and revenue, rather than optimizing towards the campaigns that generate the most form completions.

2. Bing Ads

Okay, so this sounds basic, but too often B2B companies don’t look past Google when it comes to paid search.

While Bing is unlikely to ever bring you the same volume of conversions, the chances are it will be a lot more efficient when it comes to your CPC’s and CPA’s. So why miss out on cheaper conversions?

A key thing to remember is most businesses are using Microsoft OS on their hardware and guess what the default search engine is? Bing, of course. Even at home Bing is gaining more prominence, have you tried to not use Edge and Bing on a new laptop? It’s a challenge to just install Chrome nowadays.

A very simple and quick way to get up and running on Bing is to copy over your Google campaigns using the import feature. Whilst this works relatively well, you always need to manually check all settings to ensure nothing goes wrong.

That said, it can be equally valuable to build a bespoke campaign and strategy for Bing. Consider things like search volumes, user intent, and demographics, all very different from that of Google. Therefore tailoring your approach can result in much better performance.

With Microsoft owned websites accounting for over 20 percent of search market share in the US and growing you cannot afford to be missing out on this traffic source.

3. Paid social

Paid social advertising has been getting more and more popular among advertisers in B2B businesses, particularly LinkedIn.

The targeting options on LinkedIn should really not be missed. The ability to pinpoint your target audience specifically and serve them tailored ad content is essentially everything we should all be doing as digital marketers and LinkedIn allows exactly that.

You are able to target people based on things like:

• Job title
• Company size
• Industry
• Years of experience
• Demographics
• And many more

If you are a Software as a service (SaaS) business promoting a new accounting tool it is so easy to target an audience of senior-level finance professionals in large businesses; or if you are a marketing agency promoting your PPC services, you can quickly show ads to in house marketers.

There’s also the recent introduction of interesting targeting, which allows you to target users based on interests at a generic level, marketing and advertising, or go as specific as digital marketing or even further to pay-per-click.

Further still, the advertising space on LinkedIn is constantly evolving with text ads, videos, static images, carousels, spotlight ads. The opportunity to serve relevant content to relevant audiences in various formats is everything we want. You just need to ensure you are utilizing the opportunity.

4. Audience targeting

Both Google and Bing are heavily pushing advertisers to use audience targeting within their accounts and the options they now provide can be very beneficial to B2B businesses.

The kind of audiences now available include everything from people interested in SEO, to baby clothes, to interior design.

Modifying your bids based on the audience is a great way to analyze performance; it allows you to qualify users before they get to your site by seeing which audiences convert and which don’t. You can then use this insight to apply bid modifiers and only target the traffic that works for you, therefore reducing your CPA and improving the quality of the leads you generate.

Historically, audiences were seen as a display tactic, but this has become more and more prominent on search campaigns, and the results can be fantastic. I’ve seen CPA reduce by up to 25 percent when I’ve used them myself.

This is a quick and simple thing to setup:

• Add relevant in-market audiences at a campaign level
• Allow sufficient time to generate significant data
• Review campaign level audience reports
• Reduce bids on poor performing audiences
• Increase bids on audiences who convert well

Just remember that the optimization is only going to be as good as the data you are analyzing, so make sure you leave enough time to see real trends.

If you want to go a step further you could build out specific audience-focused campaigns to give you greater control over your bidding and CPA performance.

5. Competitor strategy

Bidding on your competitors’ brand terms can be somewhat taboo, but it is rife among B2B companies, in fact, all companies really.

I would expect any paid search strategy to already have your own brand segmented out into individual campaigns, if it’s not, you should be doing this now. But I would also recommend adding your competitor brand terms into their own campaign and bidding on these too.

Whilst your CPC and CPA will be higher than your own branded campaigns, you will quite often find they are cheaper than on generic keywords. When a user searches a competitor term it can often be because they know they want the service they offer, so you are just showing them an alternative service provider.

The steps to take are:

• Create a competitor campaign
• Have an Ad Group per competitor
• Select the headline competitor keywords
• Monitor your bids closely to avoid position 1 (it will be expensive!)
• Review conversion performance

Provided you are not infringing trademarks and using brand terms directly in your ads you are perfectly able to do this.

I would also highly recommend that you set up some kind of reporting structure to monitor the impact that competitor activity is having on your brand. I look at this kind of data almost daily with the view of monitoring the relationship between my brand CPC and my competitor’s impression share and average position.

If you keep a close eye on the data you can do everything in your power to make sure you minimize any negative impact on your own brand performance.

6. Conversion rate optimization (CRO)

Sometimes you can do everything right in your paid search strategy and acquire huge numbers of visitors to your site, but that doesn’t mean that they all convert to leads and sales.

It is easy to think of traffic from paid search as being highly qualified, especially when you are bidding on long tail keywords and using things like audience targeting, but this traffic is often entering the conversion funnel on your site for the first time.

In order to get the best out of your paid search strategy, you should be continually testing elements on your website and landing pages to work out a way to create the best user experience and generate the most conversions with a well thought out CRO plan.

Basic tests include things like A/B testing different colored CTA buttons and adding conversion focused messaging on to landing pages, but you could go as far as totally redesigning landing pages specific to your PPC.

Sometimes the best and easiest way to optimize your paid search performance is to aim towards increasing your site conversion rate.

Conclusion

So to summarize, the key areas to consider in order to get the best performance from your B2B paid search strategy are:

• Setup robust tracking and attribution methods
• Make the most of Bing Ads
• Run paid social campaigns (particularly on LinkedIn)
• Utilize developments in audience targeting
• Put together a dedicated competitor strategy
• Don’t forget to test and enhance your website with a CRO strategy

Admittedly that’s quite a lot to be considering and working on at any one time but combined these areas will help you to get the best performance possible.

Dan Marshall is Digital Marketing Manager at Moneypenny.