The Mobile Hub: PPC

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Top Free Essential SEO Tools For Mobiles

by Mina Adly Younan

The growth in mobile browsing has been incredible over the past year. With nearly half of UK smartphone owners using their mobiles to browse and research products and Mobile Search accounting for an impressive 12% of all UK search clicks in December 2011 (Marin Software, 2012). Morgan Stanley Corp. have also found in a recent study that Mobile traffic is expected to surpass desktop traffic by 2015 as shown in the graph below. For a website to remain its high ranking on search engines (Google) should do all needed efforts to make their mobile versions as friendly and functional as possible.

In doing so, webmasters will need the following Top Free Essential SEO Tools for Mobiles:

1- Mobilize your Site () : see how your current site looks in mobile, and find resources for building your mobile site.

2- Our Mobile Planet (): View data about mobile users that Google has gathered. Select your key demographic and other potential customers, and view key differences.

3- Mobile Meter () gives an overview of how your site looks and performs on a mobile.

4- Google Adwords for Mobiles: It is the same Adwords tool used for desktop searches. It gives a guideline on the monthly volume in searches. The tool can also show data for searches on mobile devices. To do so, select ‘advanced options’ > ‘show ideas and statistics for’ > and select ‘mobile’.

Local search trends can be added to see seasonal fluctuations or if keyword searches are increasing in volume. Select columns and ‘local search trends’. This will show a simple bar graph, but if you download the data it will give some figures over time.

5-PageSpeed Insights (): test speed from both a desktop and mobile perspective. Very useful to see where the easiest performance improvements can be gained in terms of download speed. As site speed is considered part of Google’s algorithm, fixing issues could result in a real impact on mobile search positions.

6- Google Webmaster Tools for Mobiles: It is the same Google Webmaster tool as it can also check mobile sites setup and investigate any performance issues or poor search results. Additionally, if you redirect mobile users to specific mobile versions of your URLs, then Mobile Sitemaps can be added in Google Webmaster Tools.

7- Mobilize your Business with Google Sites (): Build a test or mock up and see how it performs. The tool have different templates for several types of landing pages.

8- Google Mobile Ads (http://www.google.com/ads/mobile/): Although it is a PPC tool, it can be used to find a lot of potential methods to look at that can drive traffic to your mobile landing pages using mobile ads like:

·         Phone numbers in ads using ‘click-to-call’,
·         click-to-download
·         Mobile Ad Sitelinks
·         Seller Ratings
·         Location Extensions (Multiple Addresses too!)
·         Location Targeting

9- Speeking of PPC, there is of course there the AdMob that is now owned by Google

10- Google Analytics for Mobiles (): The same Google Analytics for Desktop could be used for mobile browsers so that you can easily find out which mobile devices are working well, and which need optimization by asking the right questions like: Is some content getting a lot of mobile traffic but performing relatively badly? Can a page be optimized to generate more phone call leads? Which content drives more local mobile users? It is even possible to hook Analytics up to track downloads of mobile apps.

How to Calculate your ROI for Online Advertising campaigns?

3 Years ago, a Sales Manager at Google Adwords, and a friend too, told me if you know the power of Online Adverting, you will keep your campaigns "Always On". Because if for every 1000$ you pay on advertising you gain 1300$ revenue, then why limit your budget if profit can be unlimited?

So, to be more convincing we need to Calculate the net profit by subtracting your costs from your AdWords revenue for a given time period. Then divide your net profit by your AdWords costs to get your AdWords ROI for that time period.

Here's an example:

($1300 -	$1000) /	$1000 =	0.3
Your revenue (measured by conversions)	Your overall costs	Your AdWords costs	Your ratio of profit to advertising cost is 30% -- this is your AdWords ROI.

Sometimes your ROI may require a different formula. For example, if you're interested in calculating the ROI for a page view or lead, you'll have to estimate the values of each of these actions.

A Yellow Pages ad for your business may cost $1000 per year and result in 100 leads. Ten of those leads become customers, and each customer provides a net profit of $120, after taking your business costs into account. So the value of each lead is $12 ($1200 net profit/100 leads), and your ROI for the Yellow Pages ad is 120% ($1200 net profit/$1000 advertising cost) x 100.

Here's the formula used in this example: (Total revenue - Total cost)/Advertising costs x 100 = Advertising ROI %

A simple alternative to estimating values for your leads and page views is to use a cost-per-acquisition (CPA) measurement. Acquisitions are the same thing as conversions: they're actions your customers take that you think are valuable, such as completing a purchase or signing up to receive more information.

Using this method allows you to focus primarily on how your advertising costs compare to the number of acquisitions those costs deliver. Using the Yellow Pages example again, your ad may cost $1000, resulting in 10 sales. So your CPA for that ad is $100. Here's the formula for CPA:

(Costs/Sales) = CPA

Your CPA shouldn't exceed the profit you made from each acquisition. For your Yellow Pages ad, the CPA is 20% less than the profit the acquisitions provide.

Formula to calculate Cost Per Acquisition

Cost Per Acquisition (CPA) is calculated as:

ad campaign cost/[number of impressions x CTR x CR].

Example: an advertiser pays a CPM of $10. For 20,000 impressions the advertiser has 5 percent click-through rate (CTR) to the landing (destination page). 30 percent of those 5 percent convert to paying customers(CR).

The calculation is: ($10.00 * 20,000Impressions / 1000)/(20,000*0.05*0.30) = $0.67. That is, the cost per acquisition is $0.67.

See Also:

Cost Per Acuisition Formula for Local Business (Video)

SEO Consultant Job Vs. PPC Consultant Job: Infographic

Source: visualoop.tumblr.com via Visual on Pinterest

Do I have to Create a new email address for each Adwords Account?

The short answer is Yes.

It might sound annoying or pointless to create a new email address for each Adwords account. A friend might ask you to manage their Adwords, do you have to create an enw email, just for them?

Yes, you have to.

Because Google do not allow Adwords users to manage more than one account, unless the are an SEM agency (or a 3rd party professional). In that case, you will have to create the MCC. (My Client Center)

Here are some brief points, to avoid any confusion when creating and linking Adwords accounts.

You do not give MCC account manager access because MCC is not an account. It is a manager. To link an Adwords account to MCC the invitation has to be send from the MCC itself. And it is not an invitation, it is a linking request done from the MCC dashboard (interface)
However, both the sub-level account and the Top Level MCC can terminate the access at any time.

It is not allowed by Google Adwords to let you have access, with your personal email, to other Adwords accounts to administer them, if you already have your own Adwords account.
A rule of a thumb: one Email account for each Adwords account. If you want to manage more than one Adwords account, you have to be a 3^rd party SEM Agency, in that case you will need the MCC account (My Client Center), and link the other Adwords accounts (those which each of them has its own email address).

You do not have to create the email accounts, for the Adwords only purpose, on Gmail. Yet, you can create them on any corporate email, or any email server you have access to.

Canceling an Adwords account does not authorize you to have access to other Adwords accounts. An Adwords access needs a dedicated email account, or go and have an MCC, but still you will have to create a new email for the granted access, unless you have the customer ID, then you invite the customer with their ID, and they should accept your access.

Conclusion,

If you want to manage multiple Adwords accounts you will need to

Create an MCC account.
MCC is only a user interface and API. It is not an adwords account and it does not manage accounts directly.
To link adwords accounts to MCC in order to be able to access them directly, you should have the customer ID for the Adwords account (If there is no account, create an email, and an adwords account, and take the customer ID to the MCC to invite this created dedicated account). Or, create the new account on the MCC and create an email account and invite the email account from the MCC directly.
The 2 parties should accept and grant access to each other.

How to Reactivate a Canceled Adwords Account? - Fill The Form

Sometimes you want to suspend you Adwords account and stop all the running ads and campaigns. You can do so by going to "My Account" > Preferences > Account Cancellation.

To Reactivate it, you need to login in to your Adwords account, find your customer ID (on the top right corner). Then, go to this page:

https://support.google.com/adwords/contact/b3_cancel?rd=2
and fill the reactivation form.

Please not that in the summary of the issue section, you will have to write the following:

I authorise Google to modify my Google AdWords account in the following way(s):

reactivate account

1. Requested change: Reactivate account

Account email: younangrace@gmail.com

Customer ID: xxx-xxx-xxx

Adwords account activation/ cancellation form

Reactivation is done also by creating new campaigns. You will be asked if you want to reactivate the account. You just have to accept.

Google Email Targeted Adwords Display Ads

By +Mina Adly Younan
Google has launched a new type of Display Advertising Ads targeting your Gmail Account with supposedly relevant and contextual ads.

What is new about this type of Ads is that when you click them, they do not take you directly to the Ad Landing Page, but to your inbox where you can find a more promotional email.

The Perks are:

1- You can save it to your inbox
2- Forward it on
3- Or you can dismiss it (then you won't see it again).

A Screenshot from My Gmail inbox

In My opinion, it is very useful especially when you are advertising coupons, offers, events, or informative resources that your clients might find them useful and would keep them inboxed.

So, Are Google up to the email marketing business now or what?!

Advanced SEO techniques for e-Stores (infographic)

SEO techniques and Best practices for e-commerce and online Stores

Use the semantic mark-up (rich snippets) to identify the specific content of the leaf and immediately give the user, since the SERP, information about the content of the ad, therefore maximizes the chances of clicks useful.
If an item is no longer available instead of sending the user to a page completely useless, create a special that gives an indication of the possibilities offered him, maybe similar products or other alternatives.
Feedback: the ratings are low and you do not even produce them, will be the users will do it for you. Certainly will not be optimized, but since people are talking about naturally, most of passage.
Use the filters and the pages tag: optimizes only the first page-level tags and filters, so as to avoid duplication
Fill in the title: use generic keywords monetization. A good title can be: price / review / sale / Economic + product name.
Geolocation allows not only to succeed in the SERPs, but also with users. If I live in Italy, even if I buy online, I will hardly offered in America. This speech is even more important when it comes to a store that sells both online and live. The watchword today, thanks to the development of the mobile is geolocation.
Recent additions to the homepage post a direct link to the new arrivals. A user who frequently visit your site or search the news would appreciate because they do not have to dig into milel categories and filters to find new products.

Also, Do not forget:

Pagenation
Using USPs (Unique Selling Propositions)

Source: 7 advanced seo tips for-e commerce sites infographic

Ad Copies and Landing Pages A/B testing Best Practices for SEO

All you need to know about A/B Testing for landing pages and Ad copies for better SEO.

Q: What is A/B testing?

A: Running different versions of the same creative and analyzing which has better impact.

Q: When to do A/B testing?

A: 1 every 2 weeks

Q: What is a Winning Version?

A: Every 4 tests, you will find one apparent winner with 20% more conversion rate

Q: What to test?

A: In fact, everything should be tested, nut we will focus now on Landing pages and ad copies

Q: How to A/B test?

11 Obvious A/B Tests You Should Try

Free Vs. Not.
How to Video Vs. Features.
always on (scrolling) sign-up button Vs. Static.
Long form fields Vs. Short forms.
2-step checkout process Vs. multi-pages checkout.
embedded live version of the product Vs. screenshots.
Free trial Vs. Money Back Guarantee.
14-days trial Vs. 30-days trial.
Time based bonuses Vs. Open Time.
Offers with a dollar value Vs. free offers without a dollar value.
Green button Vs. Red Button.

Facebook Conversion Tracking and OCPM for Direct Response Advertising

Last month, Facebook launched a new conversion measurement and optimization system for direct response marketers. Facebook conversion measurement allows advertisers to measure the ROI of their Facebook ads by counting relevant user actions, such as registrations and shopping cart checkouts that are driven by people seeing an ad on Facebook.

What is Facebook Conversion Tracking?

Conversion tracking helps businesses measure the return on investment of their Facebook Ads by reporting on the actions people take after viewing those ads. Advertisers can create pixels that track conversions, add them to the pages of their website where the conversions will happen, and then track these conversions back to ads they are running on Facebook. Conversion tracking also helps businesses leverage optimized cost per impressions (oCPM) to show ads to people who are more likely to convert off Facebook.

What are Facebook Conversions?

A conversion is an action that a person takes on a website such as checking out, registering, leads, Key page views, adding an item to the shopping cart, or viewing a particular page. Virtually any page on a website can represent a conversion. Facebook tracks conversions that happen within 1 day, 7 days, and 28 days after a person clicks on an ad, and 1 day, 7 days, and 28 days after viewing an ad.

Benefits of Facebook Conversion Tracking and OCPM:

Optimized CPM (OCPM) and Conversion Tracking tools are not only used to measure the ROI from Facebook PPC advertising, but are also used to deliver ads to people who are most likely to convert on their websites. Facebook’s Beta tests have shown that when conversion measurement is used with optimized CPM, ads reduced the cost per conversion by 40 percent when compared to CPC ads using the same budget. That is extremely valuable for marketers in e-commerce, retail, travel, financial services, and other direct-response industries that value actions taken on their websites.

How it Works?

Facebook ad manager will monitor which ads are generating more conversions and which users are more likely to convert from specific ad copies (e.g. Ad X drove Y sales). Then you can increase the CPC (or CPM), optimize the conversions page, adjust the ad copy, or even change the marketing strategy.

New Animated Adsense Ads to be launched soon for PPC

Google Adsense is now testing a new Animated ad blocks.

The new ads are reformed automatically whenever a user hovers over them with their mouse cursors.

Watch these 2 videos to grasp how these new ads will look like on your web pages soon:

Modified Broad Match Diagram among other KWs Match Types

a href=”https://plus.google.com/111921947362490831344?rel=author”>Mina Younan

The Below is an informative illustration for Adwords Keywords matching types

The chart shows, in brief, how defining a match type for your KWs strategy can affect your results and thus your ranking.

Always put in mind: the Broader KW match type you use, the more you will pay, and the more (irrelevant) clicks you will receive.

And of course, dedicating more time for more matching match types, the less you pay, because you will receive less clicks, but the higher CTR% you will gain (because your ads will only show to "interested" users.

Should I add and pay for my Brand name Keyword on a PPC Campaign?

What does it mean to have a PPC Campaign and you are already on top of Google's SERP?

Two reasons:

1- You don't want your competitor to take your name and fill your ad space
2- You want to cover the SERP with your presence

Check this amazing example!

Best Tool for Adwords Audit: WordStream Videos

WordStream's AdWords Performance Grader

Keyword Management - Internet Marketing, Quality Score, Google AdWords, Web Analytics

WordStream PPC Advisor

Advanced Free and Paid PPC Tools for Adwords

WordStream’s Google AdWords Performance Grader

WordStream's Google AdWords Performance Grader is a free AdWords tool to help AdWords advertisers better understand how well their campaigns are performing compared to PPC best practices. The AdWords Performance Grader uses a proprietary grading algorithm based on more than 60 different factors, including ad spend data, Quality Score, ranking, impressions and other variables.

Certified Knowledge REPORT ANALYZER

The Report Analyzer allows you to easily find where you are making and losing money. Stop wasting time in Excel, this tool will do much of the work for you.

Certified Knowledge QUALITY SCORE ANALYZER

Determine exactly where you need Quality Score help. We'll give you an ordered list (and help) of where you need to improve your Quality Scores.

Certified Knowledge MASS AD COPY CREATOR

Easily create hundreds of ad copies across many ad groups. Perfect for creating ads for testing purposes or just building (or rebuilding) an account.

Certified Knowledge KEYWORD MIXER

The tool is perfect for when you want to expand your keyword list; especially using long tail methods. Easily create thousands of keywords.

Certified Knowledge CONFIDENCE CALCULATOR

This tool will let you compare tests against the control group and let you know if any of your tests have reached statistical significance.

Certified Knowledge GEOGRAPHIC KEYWORD FINDER

Get a list of the major geographic keywords available for your area. Find zip codes, cities, metros, counties, and more. Currently available on for the United States.

Certified Knowledge BROKEN LINK FINDER

Use this tool to make sure your URLs work.

Certified Knowledge SERVER HEADER CHECKER

This tool will tell you the server status of any URL. Check to see if you are using redirects, have error pages, or see other server information.

UberSuggest Keywords Suggestions Tool:

A great tool that makes good use of Google Suggest and other suggest services.

QueryMinerFree Negative Keyword Tool

Here is what they say: Most AdWords accounts have anywhere from 2%-35% of their budgets being wasted on irrelevant search queries. Get your FREE analysis and see if queryminer is right for you. It's not unusual for the free negative keywords we give you to easily cover the cost of your queryminer subscription.

Top Local SEO Tools & Software

The below is a list of Top tools to use for your Local SEO:

There is also The tables below. They contain a list of the well-regarded, locally-focused tools. There are tons of other tools which deal with other aspects of link building, content creation, PPC, call tracking, etc…

Comparison of Features for the Top Local SEO Tools:

Source:

insiders-guide-to-selecting-the-right-local-seo-tool

Local SEO Roadmap

Setting Up Landing Page Experiments on Google Analytics

Landing pages are a crucial element of any PPC campaign, so it is important to test them regularly.

Google Analytics offers up a nice tool to help us testing some items on websites landing pages.

Formerly known as Website Optimizer (standalone product), Analytics Content Experiments is now integrated within Analytics and acts as a tool for testing changes to your landing pages. One of the best parts about this tool is the fact that it automatically reveals if a test is statistically significant based on the KPI you select.

1. Click on Experiments under the Content Reporting section as shown below.

2. Enter the destination URL of the page you’re trying to improve.

3. Give your experiment a name and enter the destination URLs for each page you want to test. If you want to test more pages, simply click the Add Variation link at the bottom, as shown below.

4. Specify your experiment options. First, you need to select a KPI that Analytics can use to determine the results. In the example below, I’ve selected Email Leads. You also have the ability to decide how much traffic you want to participate, setup email notifications and more.

5. Add the Analytics Experiment code to your control/original page. If you want to add the code yourself, simply select that option as shown below. You also have the option to email the code to your developer if you don’t have access to the javascript.

6. The last step in the setup process will check to make sure the code has been placed on your page. As shown below, you can see that the system has recognized the fact that my code hasn’t been placed yet. If you want to check this later, you can select the skip validation and continue link at the bottom.

You can learn more about Analytics Content Experiments and other features for improving conversion rates here.

THE Formula You Need For PPC Account Success

Top Landing Pages A/B Testing Elements

Call-to-action buttons – Refers to the phrase that you use for the desired action (conversion) or the button that users click on to go to the next step in your conversion process. Items to test include size, shape, color, wording and more.
Headlines - Should be relevant, timely and appropriate for your audience. Consider testing emotional vs. benefit-driven headlines or questions vs. statements, for example.
Body Copy – Should also be relevant, timely and appropriate for your target audience, as well as sufficiently backup your headline. For example, you might try testing out shorter vs. longer text or paragraphs vs. bullet points.
Images & Symbols – Images and symbols can also be nice compliments to a PPC landing page if used sparingly. Images should be engaging and help compliment the basis of the landing page itself. Symbols and certification badges are also helpful for building trust and credibility. For example, you might test different types of images or placements of your trust badges.
Navigation – Adjusting the usability and navigational features of your website can also be worth testing. As a rule of thumb, it should be relatively easy to get around. If your mom can’t find her way around the site, there are probably others experiencing the same problem. Things to test include different placements of your navigation bar or the number of steps in your checkout process.
Different Pages – After you've tested some of the elements on your page, it might also be worth testing different pages against each other. For example, you might consider testing your main homepage against a PPC-specific landing page or two different PPC-specific pages against one another.
Promotions – Seasonal or time-sensitive offers are also worth testing on your landing page. These both create a sense of urgency that might help boost conversion rates. Whether it’s free shipping or 30% off all merchandise, benefits like these are attractive and can encourage visitors to take action.

SEO Audit for Local Business

Before you start running a local SEO campaign, here are a few things, written by Leo Dimilo, I found interesting to look at.

1 Know the reason for why they want to rank in the first place.

Don't get me wrong, it's always about money but most of the time, it isn't overt. For example, a restaurant who wants to rank locally won't be "selling" anything online. Instead, they may want to use the website as a way for prospective customers to get directions, view their menu or simply call.

2 How is their on-page optimization (for search)?

Are their title tags in place? Is the navigation flat? Crawl errors? How are the search bots seeing the website? What do they see? Is the linking structure optimized for the goal(s) of the website?

3 Do they have any metric system in place (if they have a website)?

This is super important because a lot of times what a company believes the website is serving may be different than what the customers want. By analyzing what they are currently getting, you can search for ways to improve the user's experience and may even reshape the website. With analytic data, you can see the problems in association with the website's goals and effectively reshape the front page to improve user experience.

4 How large is their existing online footprint?

Is their restaurant talked about online? If they have experimented with SEO, are the links they are getting coming from real or spammy sources? Are they connected to social review websites?

These questions will help you assess what direction you may want to push for online.

5 Where are their customers online?

Where do their customers congregate online? Are there ways to integrate the website's brand into the conversation cheaply? Are there cheap advertising avenues to keep their brand in the front of people who may be interested in their business?

6 What things do their competitors do online?

Are their ways to easily merge their competitor's online strategies with their own? If they are using Facebook, what things are getting the most "likes" and "shares"? How are they promoting their brand?

7 Do they have offline events that can be translated online?

For example, a local business that I am affiliated with recently bought a car for one of their employees. The money was pooled by their employees over a period of months and the car was given right before Christmas. Events like these can be used to get a business PR from newspapers, social platforms and even news stations, all of which can be linked to from the online community.

Charity events, sponsorships and general acts of good will can all be leveraged for more links and help web presence.