Google To End Expanded Text Ads in 2022

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You heard it here first, Google is officially set to sunset their expanding text ads, or ETAs, in July of 2022. According to an announcement from Sylvanus Bent, Product Manager, Google Ads, advertisers will no longer be able to create new ETAs or edit existing ETAs in Google Ads beginning in July 2022. “Your existing expanded text ads will continue to serve alongside responsive search ads, and you’ll still see reports on their performance going forward. Additionally, you’ll be able to pause and resume your expanded text ads or remove them if needed. You’ll also still be able to create and edit call ads and Dynamic Search Ads,” said Bent.

 

What to do in the meantime?

We know this news is coming pretty far in advance. What we recommend for now is to use ETA info for RSAs in the transition, which is also recommended by product managers at Google Ads. “To prepare for this change, we recommend that you have at least one responsive search ad in every ad group in your Search campaigns by June 30, 2022,” Bent suggested. Google’s announcement also has already included ways that advertisers can repurpose their ETA content for RSAs. Recommendations from Google’s team include the following:

  • Look through your ads and evaluate their success based on incremental impressions, clicks, and conversions your ad groups and campaigns receive
  • Repurpose high-performing content from your expanded text ads and focus on Ad strength
  • Pin headlines or descriptions to specific positions in your responsive search ads

This new Google update will mainly affect anyone in highly regulated fields.These are currently the industries that benefit from ETAs and will be the most impacted starting next year. 

 

Why this Extended Text Ads news is relevant 

This new update from Google is the latest move in order to make a big push in the automation through their ad products. In the announcement from Google, their team explains, “15% of search queries every day are new searches we’ve never seen before” and therefore “Automation is key to keeping pace with these trends.” While RSAs are in use by many advertisers, we also understand the control over ads that ETAs provide as well as other capabilities. The future phase-out of ETAs means advertisers are moving even further away from direct control over their accounts and having to work with the Google Ads machine learning and AI.

Before the full phase-out is complete, our experts recommend testing your ETA ad pieces in RSAs and figure out what works best so you’re not cut off completely from new ad creation when Google Ads stops allowing new ETAs. 

 

More from Onimod Global

As this is news almost a year in advance, the story is evolving and our experts at Onimod Global will keep you up to date on the latest information regarding expanding text ads and any other Google Ads updates to come. At Onimod Global, our experts have endless expertise when it comes to the latest news on Google updates. We’re here to discover what is the right and relevant information to make your ads successful. Got questions about ETAs, Google Ads, or want to learn more about us? Contact us here today. 

Google Now Shares What Factors Impact Specific Rankings

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Google now shows why it ranked a specific search result. The new ‘About This Result’ feature shows searchers information about some of these most important factors used by Google Search to connect results to their queries. Read more

Google Launches New Integration with WooCommerce to Expand Ecommerce Offerings

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Google recently announced that they’re launching a new integration with WooCommerce that will allow their merchants to upload their product inventory across all of Google’s search and discovery surfaces. Last week, the extension went live for all 4.4 million of WooCommerce’s merchants.  

The Integration’s Features:

WooCommerce retailers can now sync their store with Google to list products for free, as well as run paid ads and track performance. When a store is synced with the Google Merchant Center, all information about the store and its products will be readily available to users when searching on a Google property. Information is also automatically updated when products are added or removed. 

Like regular search results, retailers can also pay for ads if they wish to be more visible in the listings. Retailers can also run free listing and paid campaigns simultaneously. 

The Benefits: 

The extension focuses on accomplishing three main objectives for retailers: 

  • Seamlessly connecting their store with Google Merchant Center 
  • Reaching online shoppers with free listings 
  • Boosting store traffic and sales with Smart Shopping Campaigns 

Final Thoughts 

As Google continues to work to get ahead of its search competitors, they have been making eCommerce a key focus. Given the integration’s reach and ubiquity, it’s likely to become a key destination for online shopping. This is why it’s essential for retailers to stay on top of these updates, ensuring they can maximize their exposure for those searching for their products. 

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Onimod Global releases the latest digital marketing news and essential marketing tips every Tuesday and Thursday! To catch up on the top digital marketing news and trends, click here. To find out more about who we are and what we do, click here.

How to Improve Your Local Search Rankings on Google

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Do you feel like your business’s visibility on Google is lacking? If your business isn’t showing up for relevant searches in your area, it’s time to reevaluate your local SEO strategy, specifically your efforts on Google My Business. This is one of the simplest tools you can use to improve your local Google ranking and quickly. 

If you don’t already have a robust Google My Business strategy, here are some things you can do to up your game. 

1. Enter Complete Data

Businesses with complete and accurate information are easy to match up with the right search queries. This is why it’s crucial to consistently keep your information up to date, especially if you’re making changes to your business. You want users to be able to easily tell what you do, where you are and when they can visit. Be sure to always have your address, contact information, business category and attributes filled out on your profile and up to date. 

2. Verify Your Location 

Verifying your location will make it more likely you show up in Maps and Search on Google. The simplest way to verify your location is through a postcard. To do this, all you have to do is request Google to send you a postcard to your business address. Before you request, be sure you have the following steps completed: 

  1. You have a standard Google Account for your business. 
  2. You have a Business Profile. 
  3. You have a Google My Business account.
  4. You’ve claimed your Business Profile. 
  5. You’ve verified ownership of your business. 

They usually arrive within 2 weeks. Once you’ve received the postcard, you’ll notice a verification code. You’ll enter this into your Google My Business profile and your location will be verified. 

3. Keep Your Hours Accurate 

Accurate hours let customers know when you’re available and give them confidence you’ll be open if they take the time to travel to you. Accurate hours are also another factor Google uses in determining if your business is legitimate, ranking your relevancy for each query accordingly. Be sure to update your hours regularly, including when you open and close and if you have special hours for holidays or events. 

4. Manage and Respond to Reviews 

One of the most critical factors to online rankings are customer reviews. A large number of genuine reviews lets customers know you’re a real and reputable company. To grow your number of reviews, frequently ask for customer feedback through email, on social and in person. Be sure to link your Google My Business Profile so they know where to leave the review. Responding to reviews can be just as important as getting them. This shows you listen to your customers and value their feedback. Google also highly favors business with a large number of positive reviews when it comes to relevant searches. 

5. Add Photos

To showcase your goods and services, and to tell the story of your business, add photos to your Business Profile. Accurate and appealing pictures may also show shoppers that your business offers what they’re searching for. These images may also appear in Google search results if a user is searching for your products or about your industry. Thus, growing your brand awareness and increasing your overall reach. 

Final Thoughts

At Onimod Global, we’re a trusted Google Partner. Meaning we specialize in all Google Ad areas including: 

  • Search Advertising 
  • Mobile Advertising 
  • Video Advertising 
  • Display Advertising 
  • Shopping Advertising 

If you need assistance in any area of Google Ads, SEO or SEM in general, contact us today. 

More from Onimod Global

Onimod Global releases the latest digital marketing news and essential marketing tips every Tuesday and Thursday! To catch up on the top digital marketing news and trends, click here. To find out more about who we are and what we do, click here.

Top 3 Google Ads Features

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Google released new smart features and ways to buy ads on its different channels. Much like all other updates to Google Ads features, there will be learning curve with the new tools. Here is how you can make them work for you.

1. Get listed for free on Google Shopping

Google is still operating as a paid PPC channel, but you can also enjoy its free traffic. Once Google had introduced the shopping channel to their platform, Google completely beat most of the other price comparison websites from its SERP (Shopping.com, Shopzilla, BizRate). Following this very significant move that occurred in 2017, the European Commission fined Google €2.42 billion (~$3 billion) for breaching EU antitrust rules by “giving an illegal advantage to another Google product, its comparison shopping service.” This claim is still going through appeal, Google has made changes to ensure other options are present on its services and SERP than its own.

How should you make it work for you? Number one priority is optimizing your Shopping Ads and understand what products click and convert the most. For example, you can use SEISO Google Shopping Analyzer (Free to try) to get shopping reports. From there you can adapt your product feed and product pages to ensure you focus on products that are margin positive.

2. Get impressions on Goolge Ads for free.. only pay  your sales

When it comes to online acquisiton of new formats, video and display formats are not the first type of format you think of They are more popular for brand awareness and influence targets. Google now is trying to convince you otherwise. Google has so much data on users’ profiles and their intents that they can predict what they will buy. Google knows the users very well: from the search queries, from the media they consume (Videos, AMP pages…), and its past purchases thanks to receipts received in Gmail.

Thanks to this treasure trove of data points, the algorithm identifies which new video game console the user wants. And it only shows him the relevant ads when the customer is ready to buy. The ad will be more likely to convert and Google will get a higher revenue per page by only showing converting ads to users: win/win.

You can now run performance-based targeting for Youtube Ads and on the Display network. It usually means a lower reach than a CPM or a Trueview campaign but you will get incremental conversions while controlling your budget.

How to keep tracks of offline conversions

Nowadays, it is very simple to forget that most of the business still happens offline and that zoom calls and online shopping are not all there is to life. Yet offline conversions tracking are not always taken into account. According to Google, 30% of mobile queries are local searches and it is the fastest-growing segment. And 75% of users making a local search will go to a store within 24 hours. This is a lot of conversion lost to online tracking.

In order to be successful tracking these conversions for Google Ads, you will need to set up an omnichannel tracking that integrates offline elements. From there you will be able to measure different types of conversion. You should create a set of conversion actions for each campaign:

  • In-store visits: Google automatically tracks walk-in traffic from user’s location captured from their Apps and OS). You will need to register all your points of sales addresses or GPS coordinates.
  • Offline purchase thanks to offline the Conversions API or bulksheets upload.
  • Online purchase through your regular tracking pixel.

More from Onimod Global

Onimod Global releases the latest digital marketing news and essential marketing tips every Tuesday and Thursday! To catch up on all Google updates and other top digital marketing news and trends, click here. To find out more about who we are and what we do, click here.

Onimod Global is looking forward to the future and helping your business reach your full digital potential. Interested in growing your digital presence for your company? Reach out to us here!

Google Will End Behavioral Targeting – What’s The Impact

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We’re officially in full swing of 2021, and that has come with tighter privacy and data regulations across the board. Google, who is up against high pressure from regulators around antitrust and data privacy, announced that they will cease the permission of cross-site tracking and targeting of individuals outside its own properties. This would include properties such as in inventory they sell through video ad exchange and Google Ad display.

 David Temkin, director of product management and ads privacy wrote in a blog post, “Today, we’re making explicit that once third-party cookies are phased out, we will not build alternate identifiers to track individuals as they browse across the web, nor will we use them in our products.”

Google’s move comes directly after the recent decision of Apple to give users the choice to block the IDFA identifier at the app level, which means apps will be required to ask users for permission to collect and share data.

“This is yet another confirmation the web is shifting to a consent-oriented framework,” said Nii Ahene, Chief Strategy Officer at Tinuiti. “It’s going to be all about opt-in, not opt-out initiatives.”

It is very evident that many of the behavioral targeting capabilities marketers have heavily depended on will fade out or disappear completely, however it is not yet confirmed the exact implications of how this will affect each of Google’s Ad products. The changes are slated to take place at the end of the year and only impact the open web, not mobile app ads purchased and sold using Google’s ad tech.

Important highlights from Google

At this exact stage, here is what we know for sure:

  • Google will be completely stopping to build user-level profiles within its ad systems. They will also not use such data to enable targeting on non-Google sites. That means Google’s AdX ad exchange and other services that target ads to web inventory outside Google properties will no longer support any cookie replacement identifiers.
  • Google’s ad targeting changes are focused solely on the open web. At this time, the changes will not apply to the mobile app ads bought and sold using Google’s ad tech.
  • Google’s targeting changes only will go into effect after the company officially stops recognizing third-party cookies in its Chrome browser. In January 2020, the company said it would do that within two years.
  • Advertisers will still be allowed to target their own databases of consumers through their own first-party data on Google properties, such as Google’s search results pages and YouTube.

More from Onimod Global

Onimod Global releases the latest digital marketing news and essential marketing tips every Tuesday and Thursday! To catch up on all Google updates and other top digital marketing news and trends, click here. To find out more about who we are and what we do, click here.

Onimod Global is looking forward to the future and helping your business reach your full digital potential. Interested in growing your digital presence for your company? Reach out to us here!

 

3 SEA Tips To Win Business With Local Search

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The behavior of customers has completely changed making local search relevant and on the map. More and more consumers realize the ease and opportunity of online search and purchase due to restrictions on movement in the pandemic times. Individuals want a tailored search view with results that are relevant to where they are at that very moment. This is where search engine advertising, or SEA, comes into play.

To win over those customers and create conversion opportunities, your location-specific ads must be at the top of the search engine results page; it’s a competitive imperative.

Here are three SEA tips every marketer needs to win local marketing with paid search.

1) Don’t rely on just one search engine

Location targeting — through Google Ads, for example — marks a huge revolution for advertisers and marketers. It enables them to maximize their PPC by targeting ads to specific areas.

Despite this being a very helpful tool, there are still significant blindspots. The data provided by Google Ads and others isn’t as detailed as necessary when it comes to things such as monitor competitor strategies or uncover opportunities that may crop up. Advertisers and marketers need to keep this in mind when gathering data on all different kinds of search engines in order to make their strategies effective and dynamic. For advertisers to juggle national, state, and local demand is almost impossible to accomplish manually or without the right data. Which is why AI is crucial to success when it comes to succeeding in the local search market.

2) Customize your local SEA ads

Ad customization by location is becoming increasingly more popular, and makes you that much more relevant to the customer. For example, 72% of desktop or tablet users and 67% of smartphone users want ads customized to their location. Additionally, 82% of smartphone users search for businesses near them; 90% click on the first set of results they see.

One of the main parts to local search marketing is customizing the ad to each location with messaging and strategy. Follow these five steps from Search Engine Land to creating click-winning location-based ads:

  1. Be there: Know where your products and services are most needed.
  2. Be relevant: Is your ad creative relevant and specific? Are you appearing at the right time?
  3. Be useful: Don’t be generic in your copy and CTAs. Each work must express your services and answer your questions.
  4. Be quick: Any delay in response to market and competitor shifts will set you back, no matter your size.
  5. Be top: Target the most relevant search terms in location. The closer you are to number one the greater the likelihood of a click.

3) Stay relevant with the Google updates

Keeping track of the multitude of updates Google is no easy feat. Google makes every month across its Shopping, PPC and SEO offerings. Difficulty is not the only complication, there is also a real necessity to remain ‘in the know’ about these updates. This is because, as search engine markets continuously show, even one missed update can dramatically and quickly send you spiraling down from position one.

More from Onimod Global

Onimod Global is looking forward to the future and helping your business reach your full digital potential. Interested in growing your digital presence for your company? Reach out to us here!

Onimod Global releases the latest digital marketing news and essential marketing tips every Tuesday and Thursday! To catch up on the top digital marketing news and trends, click here. To find out more about who we are and what we do, click here.

5 Google Ads Campaign Tips for 2021

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Is your 2021 resolution to improve your Google Ads campaigns and increase your overall business profitability? As marketers, it’s important to maintain control over our strategies and campaigns. Google’s optimizations are not always in the best interests of our business, they also don’t exactly know the context of our brands. To succeed in the upcoming year, we must try new things and change our strategies and tactics. We have to integrate more data, retain control over automatic Google optimizations and fight against increased competition. 

Here are 5 things to do and focus on in 2021 to improve your Google Ads campaigns. 

1. Have keyword intent. 

Google always favors consistency with campaigns. The more similar performance your keywords have, usually the better the campaign will perform overall. When selecting keywords, user intent should be the top priority around which we group our keywords. 

Users who have searched for the name of your brand are obviously more likely to convert once they make it to your website. So, any keywords relating to your brand should be grouped together since they bring the best CPA and ROAS. Any keywords mentioning “price” or “discount” are strong signals of purchasing intent as well. Phrases including “specifications,” “size” or “warranty” are important to bid on, but CTR and CR are likely to be lower, so you want to reduce your bid. 

If you want to improve results, it’s important to visualize and quantify areas in which you can improve things and find new business. The trick is to structure your account appropriately. This can be a tedious and complicated process, but there are a number of tools that can assist you. 

2. Declutter your campaigns. 

Keeping a close eye on all aspects of your campaigns can seem overwhelming, yet it can be key to success. Any underperforming spend represents the portion of your Google Ads investment that either has a low quality score or isn’t converting enough. To reduce waste spend, it’s important to focus on two Google reports: Quality Score and Search Query Report. This will help you analyze the search terms that trigger your ads and identify where to increase and decrease spend. 

3. Identify and double down on your strengths. 

It’s a common misconception that bidding on new keywords automatically leads to increasing sales. While this is sometimes true, it’s more effective to make sure you have the maximum market share on the keywords that are your most profitable, beyond just branded traffic. 

The best way to ensure you don’t miss out on any opportunity is to monitor your impression share on Google Ad SEPRs. Lost impressions relate to missed opportunities on searches related to the keywords you bid on. Best practice includes focusing on your top 10 campaigns and checking the market shares of your competitors, monitoring closely when you’re not shown and identifying why that might be. 

4. Use high quality creatives. 

Ad copy and visuals obviously play a huge role in your campaigns. Users are exposed to more than 6000 ads daily, so standing out and grabbing attention is essential. The quality of creative weighs up to 80% in the performance of Facebook Ads campaigns and the case is similar for Google Ads. Optimizing ads and creatives includes giving in to statistics. It’s impossible to know for sure which creatives will perform best without testing multiple versions. It’s also important to continuously test ads. Even when you identify a clear winner in one test, create new versions to continue to test to ensure you’re always increasing your ad performance. 

5. Spend smarter, not more. 

Spend should be allocated not only on keywords or placement levels, but user profiles also need to be taken into account. Data is gathered from users’ declarative info, when and where they’re active online, as well as Google Analytics shared data and inferred data from previous search queries. It’s important to take these user profiles into consideration and make bid adjustments to your most valuable audiences and criteria. 

More from Onimod Global 

At Onimod Global we’re experts in all areas of Google Ads. If you’re looking for digital marketing assistance, we can help your business reach its full digital potential. Interested in growing digital presence for your company? Reach out to us here!

Onimod Global releases the latest digital marketing news and essential marketing tips every Tuesday and Thursday! To catch up on the top digital marketing news and trends, click here. To find out more about who we are and what we do, click here.

Google Core Update December: First Insights

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Google’s December 2020 Core update was a notable change according to several data providers. The Google core update is now completely finished rolling out as of December 16, 2020 and while the December core update is not figured out completely, experts at Onimod Global wanted to share significant first insights that can be made so far based on first data.

What is a core update?

Google changes their algorithm on an almost daily basis.  A couple of times a year, they release significant changes to their core search algorithms and systems that are much more noticeable. Potentially in the past, your website may have experience a decline in traffic following a Google core update. This most likely is related to the fact that Google’s algorithms have determined that there are other pages on the web that are more relevant and helpful than yours. It can be frustrating to SEO’s to not know how Google does this.

How search works

  1. Organize content on the internet:
    As Google crawls the internet and all of the web pages that can be searched in a search engine, they organize the pages in an index. They take note of key signals on each page such as which keywords are on the page, how up to date the page is, and more.
  2. What is the meaning of the user’s search query:
    In order to know what to recommend, Google needs to understand exactly what the user means with their search query. Algorithms determine whether a query is looking for fresh, new content or not. Some words in a query may be easy for Google to decipher. This has become quite advanced with the featured snippets showing you a small graph or snippet of information that is a fast answer to a search query.
  3. What pages are the most helpful:
    Once Google understands the intent behind a query, their goal is to return web pages that are the most helpful to answer this query.

Patterns from the latest update

  1.  Google may have made changes to how they assess alternative medical topics
    According to Search Engine Land, several company sites in the medical industries have performed better after this update. It’s possible that Google may have made strides in being able to understand which of these pages are trustworthy. In the past, SEL says that a lot of alt-med content was simply discounted by Google even though it was the type of content many people were searching for.
  2. UX becoming a factor
    If you declined with this update and have a large number of ads, especially ads that interfere with a user’s ability to read the main content, it may be worth experimenting with showing fewer ads. But know that if Google did change something with this core update in regards to ads, you may need to wait until there is more data about the core update and its improvements.
  3. More attention to headings and content structure
    This allows for faster skimming, and searchers like to skim headings to determine whether an article is one with which they want to engage. One of the questions Google lists in their post on core updates is, “Does the headline and/or page title provide a descriptive, helpful summary of the content?” This is telling of the fact that this update has placed an emphasis on this type of content.

More from Onimod Global

Onimod Global is looking forward to the future and helping your business reach your full digital potential. Interested in growing digital presence for your company? Reach out to us here!

Onimod Global releases the latest digital marketing news and essential marketing tips every Tuesday and Thursday! To catch up on the top digital marketing news and trends, click here. To find out more about who we are and what we do, click here.

Top 4 Digital Marketing Trends For 2021

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Many businesses have completely altered the way they operate in 2020. More and more products and services move online and many employees will continue to work remotely or in a hybrid setting for much of next year. What are the most relevant digital marketing trends for 2021 that your business should keep in mind to build customer loyalty and generate more traffic, leads, and revenue? Check out the top 4 areas Onimod Global experts recommend to invest your time and resources into next year. If you’re not sure where to begin, this list is the perfect starting point.

Businesses must embrace the digital transformation

The post-COVID world we will hopefully experience in 2021 will make a digital presence for companies almost mandatory. “Digital transformation” has become a popular buzzword since March 2020, and all types of companies are investing heavily in the migration to digital platforms. This includes platforms such as e-commerce, chatbots, email, apps, artificial intelligence, predictive analytics, omnichannel marketing and augmented and virtual reality.

Google listings and local SEO will be a top priority for small businesses

If you own a small business, one of the most important things you can do is ensure your local listings are verified and kept current on various search platforms. For B2C businesses that draw in primarily local traffic, the Google My Business listing provides valuable information about your hours and whether or not they are affectd by COVID, services, and geographical location. It’s one of the key factors in search and business owners are often blown away to learn how many directories there are out there.

One tip you can easily implement today: make sure that you have a geographically-defined service area in your local listings. Doing this will help your business show up in “near me” searches. That’s because Google and other search engines will prioritize relevance in their search algorithms.

Voice search and its power

Voice search queries will often populate different results than if the user had typed in a text-based search. Even though voice search is not a part of Google’s algorithm, it still dictates current search results. This means that businesses should be up to date on voice search components for their consumers who are adapting and switching over to that medium.

Content must be specifically optimized for voice searches, according to experts in voice search. The content needs to be more direct and conversational, and by doing so it will accurately sync with search queries. This will help boost traffic by staying relevant and more visible to consumers.

Influencer marketing a key pillar of marketing for consumer brands

Consumer brands have historically used social media influencers to present authentic unbiased advertising to appeal to prospects and customers. The pandemic amplified the impact influencers have on the purchase of products, due to a limited ability to shop at stores and increased online shopping traffic.

A recent study found that 40% of people reported that they purchased a product online after seeing it used by an influencer on YouTube, Instagram or Twitter. Influencers and their impact are expected to gain even more popularity and followers and businesses to use influencers more than ever before.

More from Onimod Global

Onimod Global is looking forward to the future and helping your business reach your full digital potential. Interested in growing your digital presence for your company? Reach out to us here!

Onimod Global releases the latest digital marketing news and essential marketing tips every Tuesday and Thursday! To catch up on the top digital marketing news and trends, click here. To find out more about who we are and what we do, click here.