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Tag: search engines

Mobile-first indexing: Should you worry about your current ranking?

 

From 2015 to 2016, Google has gradually rolled out the Mobilegeddon – a series of updates aimed to index and rank websites that are mobile-friendly. This update prompts most website owners to make sure their websites are responsive to the screen sizes of mobile devices.

With a few things going around the Google SERPs in the past weeks like FRED and other ranking changes, SEO experts have buried again in their desk figuring out what could be done to adapt to these algorithmic changes in the SERP. Until recently, Google confirmed that it is starting to roll out the mobile-first indexing in July.

Mobile-centric Culture

In the past years when the primary device to browse websites are the desktops and laptops, Google crawlers crawl and index websites based on their performance on the desktop. But as the lifestyle of being on-the-go become the new norm, people started to be mobile. The usage of mobile gadgets has increased drastically, especially in terms of personal searches. A year ago, Google announced that 60% of global searches were from mobile devices.

Other vital contributing factors are smartphone cost and internet connectivity. These two supports oxygen to heat up the usage of smartphones. With the continuous evolution of specifications, and rationalization of smartphone and data cost, people are more and more pushed towards mobile.

Mobile-first indexing

To support the increasing activity using mobile, Google has started to be a devout evangelist of better mobile experience. And other evidence of their commitment to this crusade is the release of mobile-first indexing on top of the mobilegeddon in 2015.

Mobile-first indexing is a little different and less disruptive than the mobilegeddon. It aims to prioritized indexing and ranking of websites based on their collective mobile presence. If mobilegeddon prioritized ranking based on mobile-responsiveness, mobile-first focuses on compliance and equivalence.

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Should I get worried about my current ranking?

If you are worried about your current SEO, you might be asking yourself whether that worry is qualified or not, and here’s the answer:

 YES and NO

YES – if you have a mobile version, but don’t deliver as a good as the desktop version

NO – If you are mobile-responsive and delivers valuable content, or with a mobile version that is equally the same with the desktop version.

Another issue that would cross your mind is, will affect my ranking and traffic?

Answer: There might be no great impact on the rankings, but there is in traffic. Remember the premise of having a mobile version which disconnects the user experience when one jumps from desktop to mobile? Well, that one can have a greater impact on traffic.

The bottom-line of mobile-first indexing is to make mobile searches better for all users, and that includes consistent user experience across devices.

Exciting Learnings and Updates from Marketing Next 2017

San Francisco, California – The Ads and Commerce Business of Google has announced new innovations at the recently concluded Google Marketing Next 2017 event. They made it clear to the audience that these updates are thrilling for both advertisers and agencies. The innovation for this year focuses more on making AdWords, Analytics and DoubleClick, much efficient for all – especially in making reports and digesting data to better understand the online audiences.

The Keynote event was started by the Sridhar Ramaswamy, Google’s Senior Vice President for Ads and Commerce with the overview of what shall be expected with Google AdWords, Google Analytics and DoubleClick for this year. Below is a rundown of interesting facts that you need to know:

  • Ramaswamy presented that 87% of the world population rely on Google search in times of need. He highlighted in his talk that “search” above all, serves as the first contact point of users whenever they are curious about knowing something or doing research prior to purchase.
  • 20% of worldwide searches are voice search. And what does this supposed to mean, especially for the marketers? This is a good gauge that as mobile devices evolve in a fast-paced, so is the way users search in Google.
  • Ramaswamy reminded marketers to always put consumers at the heart of their brand strategy. And the only way to do that is my making a marketing strategy driven by smart data in every phase of the consumers’ searches. And that is what the current updates in Google AdWords address.
  • Get the fundamentals of ‘mobile-first’ right. – The usage of mobile devices is increasing at a rate higher that what is expected, but the availability and infrastructure for mobile data around the world are not completely fast. There are countries like the Philippines with a below-average mobile data. To ensure users have a better experience as they navigate your website, it should load not more than two (2) seconds. Every second – beyond 2 seconds – delivers a much larger bounce rate.

In order to attain this, your website should be mobile responsive and all your media (photos, video, and dynamic) should be compressed in a size optimal for mobile web browsing.

  • The consumer has a diminishing sense of the boundary between online and offline. – The reality of doing business today is embracing the reality that users can no longer distinguish online between offline.

70% of consumers turn to their smartphones before making an action, either buying or dining. And with that, consumers move seamlessly from online to offline – from searching locally in Google to actually going into their choice of store. This action brings consumers to a thinking that what they had experienced while searching for a store online should be exactly what they will experience as they step into the store’s entrance.

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Google Updates

Below is a quick list of the updates of Google for their three platforms:

  • Google Attribution

Before, marketers are left with no choice but to rely on the last click attribution as the final touch point that contributes to conversion. Now, Google has resolved the issue of attribution in doing campaigns – hence the Google Attribution. The good thing is, Attribution will be available for AdWords, Analytics, and DoubleClicks for no cost. However, there is an Attribution 360 available for a certain cost which gives more flexibility in doing customization depending on the demand for granular data by the company.

Moreover, Google will be introducing Unique Reach reporting in AdWords. This metric is de-duplicated across devices, campaigns, and formats. Now, you can measure how many people were shown your display and video ads. You can see two new metrics in your AdWords: Unique users and average impression per unique users.

  • Integration of Google Optimize in AdWords

We all know that when a website is hard to use, the bottom-line of the campaign will be severely affected. Google Optimize is a tool targeted for marketers to create a landing page that can be tested for its effectivity. This tool doesn’t need the help of a webmaster and coding skills to run. Google will soon integrate Optimize to AdWords for marketers to evaluate the effectiveness of their landing pages to improve their ad quality scores.

  • Google Surveys in AdWords and DoubleClick

After getting a hit from your ad, it is still hard to get from these figures a qualitative data that is essential in evaluating the success of your campaign. Google announced that it will soon integrate Google Surveys in AdWords to let marketers send an automatic quick survey to every click to extract some vital qualitative information.

For further functionalities, Google will make Google Survey 360 available for advertisers who need it.

  • Google Assistant

This is the most exciting part for retail-type of clients. Google Assistant is a conversation with Google to help people get things done – this is a brief but powerful message from Jennifer Liu, the director for Google Shopping.

For a better understanding, Google Assistant is an artificial intelligence that is activated via voice command. From the word itself, it is designed to help users search for something over Google without lifting a finger.

Now, this one is by far the most thrilling innovation for retailers. Why? Because Google Assistant is designed for searches of tangible products (or even services in the future). Google is encouraging retailers to take part in making shopping via Google easy for every user by sending updates of their inventories in their branches.

You can watch the entire Keynote speeches in the video from Google below:

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Google Marketing Next 2017 surely brought a lot of exciting innovations what will surely improve every stakeholder of Google’s ecosystem. It will surely make advertisers and agencies happy and most of all making users much happier by getting more relevant information.

If you want to know how AdWords can help your small business make a big leap in Google search engine, you can always reach iManila at (02) 490-0000 or at [email protected] for services relevant to Google marketing such Search Engine Advertising for search and display, and Search Engine Optimization to improve your website’s ranking.

FRED: Could this be the initial SEO shake-up of 2017?

Many website masters may have noticed lately that their ranking is gradually diluting, and that their website traffic decreases despite their SEO compliance. Some of them are probably thinking that there is something wrong with their SEO activities, but some had a hint that Google may have released an algorithm update somewhere in the first quarter of the year.

What really happened is that most sites saw 50 percent to 90 percent traffic declines from Google organic search. This was a massive organic ranking drop for these sites. It is somewhat believed that the update was released last March 08, when there has been as a sudden drop in the traffic and even rankings.

And according to some SEO thought-leaders, FRED (which they named the update) targets websites that are low in quality content but heavy on the ads. Other than confirming that it was targeting ad-heavy sites, Google hasn’t said much more about Fred. Since there are no other details about the update, it probably would help most webmasters to focus on their links, including the method of acquiring those links.

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Link building is always about quality over quantity. A few links from embedded within websites with outstanding domain authority are always better than a bucket of weak and spam-y links.

Since Fred has been making a shake-up in the SEO world, one thing appears to be a definite course-of-action for SEO experts and webmasters – to continue creating quality content and earn quality links.

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And in terms of on-page SEO, iManila’s digital marketing team is capable of helping small businesses to start their online presence through Google search engine’s results page. Visit our digital marketing page to know more about the services that we offer. For inquiries, please call (02) 565-4064 or send us an email at [email protected]

Things To Know Before Running an AdWords Text Ad

There will come a day when all businesses in the Philippines will shift online. And as of today, there’s a big chance that a sales executive will knock on your door and tell you, “Ma’am/Sir you need to advertise your business online, it’s the best way for you to get noticed without a big budget.”

What comes after are the feelings of amazement and confusion. Questions like, “Does it really work? Will it really work for my business? Do I need to allot more budget? How will I know if I am getting more from it?”

I am pretty sure that these are the things that you have in mind and you’re probably seeking for someone to guide you in making a decision whether to go or not.

At iManila, we encourage you to go for it. However, we first make sure that our prospective clients know the following things before we actually proceed to do the Google Search Ads for them.

  • First Mandatory: Website

One of the primary goals of a Google Ad is to bring web traffic through web clicks. The ads serve as a portal to bring them to a website of the client. If the client doesn’t have a website, we advise them to consider having one before we proceed with the ads.

A website serves as a primary online contact point of any online searchers to a prospective firm or business. The website must contain all vital information about the business including all contact numbers, email addresses, and physical address. We also highly recommend that the website contains all the offerings be it products or services.

Having a Website is NOT Enough

The website is mandatory but that doesn’t mean that having one is the end of it all. A website should be regularly updated. It should be well-designed and easy to navigate; otherwise, visitors will just bounce off.

The experience visitors have with a website is what matters to Google. If visitors are having a hard finding what they need to see on your website, then that means that the website is not well-made or it lacks content and substance. In return, Google will remove you from ranking high in the Google Search Engine Results Page, and it can also affect your ad rank in Google ads.

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  •  Second Mandatory: Research

We ask our clients if they have an accurate knowledge and sharp business intelligence about their competitors and their industry. This is for them to brief us about their positioning, prices and same with their competitors. If they don’t have one, we do some research to better understand their business and the competition within the industry.

What do we mean by competition?

We do not limit our research to offline must-knows such as location, prices, and their offerings. We also try running some keywords about the business and see if they are doing Google Ads as well. This will help us determine how tight it will get for our prospective clients should they push through with the service. And that’s how we adjust in terms of budget suggestion, keywords and even the landing pages of their ads.

  • Third Mandatory: Landing Page

A landing page is a specific page in the website that serves as a catch basin of incoming traffic from the Google Ads. It is the first page that they will see, hence the importance of having a well-designed and well-written one.

A landing page should be well-made and simple to understand. Moreover, it needs to have one explicit and achievable goal. Goals could be sign-ups, purchases or downloads. These landing pages offer valuable materials that are needed to be a downloaded from a portal going to an e-commerce page to convert them into a client.

What we always tell our clients is: Landing pages should contain a relevant and easy to understand core message. It either instructs to download, persuades to buy or begs for sign-ups.

  • Fourth Mandatory: Budget

Launching an ad means you are willing to pay a certain amount to post the ad. The same goes with Google Ad. It is universal for all ad platforms (both online and traditional) that an ad budget is required.

The difference between Google and other online platforms is that you have the power to dictate what budget works for you, unlike the traditional ones.

Fifth Mandatory: Understanding the Idea of the Bidding Scheme and PPC

Google Ads are created to operate on a specific model which is the pay-per-click type. Pay-per-click or PPC means that the advertiser gets charged for every click. If there are fewer clicks, there will be fewer charges as well. However, if there are a greater number of clicks, the higher is the possibility of spending your maximum allocated budget.

The bidding scheme, on the other hand, pertains to who gets the top spot in the allocated areas on the first page of Google based on the willingness to spend greater amount. However, Google rationalizes their bidding rules by incorporation of a quality score. Those advertisers whose ads obtain a high-quality score gets the spots.

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How to Achieve Better Quality Score?

Quality scores of Google ads are computed using the following elements:

  • Bid – refers to the amount the advertiser is willing to spend
  • Ad Relevance – The resonance of the ad message to the online researchers. It is sometimes evaluated by Click-through rate. Click-through rate is the number of clicks your ad gets over the number of times it was shown by Google.
  • Landing Page experience – The behavior of the visitors as they land on your page. The higher the bounce (quick and unexpected movement of visitors out of the website) rate is considered as bad landing page experience.

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As mentioned from the items above, clients need to make sure that they have everything in their arsenal before actually going for a Google ad – and one of those is having a well-made website with compelling landing pages.

Taking into considerations the ‘mandatories’ above will result in a higher success rate when doing the Google ad.

For further questions and inquiries about the Google Ad or with Website Development and revamp. Contact us at (02) 490-0000 or send us an email at [email protected].

 

 

Online Duopoly: Which One Is Suitable For Your Business, Facebook or Google?

 

Facebook or Google? This could be one of the common questions business owners kept on asking themselves. One of the digital truths that you need to deal with is that a business cannot grow online on organic alone. That is true in some cases, especially when venturing into digital marketing for the first time. But with so many platforms available, from search engines, apps, websites, and to social media networks – you might be wondering which one to choose when advertising your business online.

The truth is, these overwhelming choices shouldn’t be your primary concern.

Why?

Because there are only two dominant leaders in online advertising today namely: Google and Facebook. And you should stick with them quite often when dealing with digital ads,

The Duopoly

Admit it or not, there are only two entities in so far, who have valuable profile data of online users in the world – Google and Facebook. They are the two titans who earn a lot from their ad platform businesses, thus calling them a duopoly.

Why duopoly? You probably asking yourself.

To begin with, Facebook owns Instagram, Messenger, and WhatsApp. These four are the top social media networks and social messaging platforms in terms of numbers of active users.

In the recent quarterly report of Facebook, the flagship platform has reached a 1.9 Billion user base per month. Instagram has 700 million each month while the two leading social messaging platform – Messenger and WhatsApp – both have 1.2 billion user base.

Facebook earns a staggering 97% of its 2016 revenue from its digital advertising business.

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Meanwhile, Google – a world renowned search engine brand that reached immense trust and popularity for having a spot in the Oxford dictionary is also a leader in transforming digital marketing these days. This brand has earned an accepted scholastic use of its verb variations such as “googled” and googling” making Google undeniably one of the greatest modern enterprises of the millennium.

Google owns YouTube – the world’s largest video streaming site. It also expands its services through consolidating its core businesses under the name Alphabet Inc. Alphabet is responsible for developing and reshaping its services that are linked with their core mission to improve the user experience. Alphabet Inc. from the name of the company itself covers almost the entire Roman alphabet including the Ad platform of Google for search and display networks.

Google digital ad business generates 32.8% of the total revenue of this tech conglomerate.

Which One is Right for Your Business?

A good approach to this question is to try both and see which works well with your business. But since most of the SMEs marketing budget are strictly limited, doing so is not in your priority list. To weight which one is right for your business. Below is our weigh in:

 

  • B2B and Service-oriented business

Does your business belong in this category? If YES, then Google search engine marketing (SEM) fits your business well. Why? The reason is plain and simple. A B2B model relies heavily on website transactions, and this is out of corporate custom revolving around the idea of legitimacy. When a website is your primary contact point online, Google’s search engine marketing is a go-to platform.

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  • B2C and Consumer Goods / Retail

The good thing about this category is that the risk of losing money when investing in both platforms is low compared to B2B and Service-oriented businesses. The reason is, reaching the end consumers with products (tangible trades) that they really need is one foot ahead than business offering services (which are intangible).

In this kind of business, if one looks after brand awareness, social ad via Facebook is a good avenue. With most retail business in the country relying on brick-and-mortar store than e-commerce, social ads by Facebook fits just fine. Be it engagement or web clicks (or visits), Facebooks ads can surely reach to the end consumers with ease.

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In the Philippines, there is a preconceived notion of having comfort in purchasing tangible trades than the intangible ones. If you are in the business of providing services, you got to build a solid reputation to compete well with your competitors online. If you are dealing with consumer goods and retail, the challenge is to create a way to sift through the clutters of other consumer-centric ads online.

Be it Facebook or Google, the success of an online ad relies on understanding your audience and your business. Once you all had it in your mind and in your heart, sending the message across these two platforms won’t be too much of a pain.

If by chance that a business like yours is looking for an assistance in starting your brand presence online either through Facebook or through the search engine of Google, iManila is capable of helping you get noticed by your target audience online.

Give us a call at (02) 490-0000 / (02) 565-4064, or send your inquiries through our website portal at https://imanila.ph/lets-talk/