Ecommerce Management Advisors
Ecommerce Management Advisors
Google investigating indexing delays affecting some sites since Monday night, working to identify and resolve root cause.
PPC management can suck up some major time if you’re focusing on elements that don’t matter, unnecessarily bloating your account, or skipping time-saving tools.
These seven Google Ads shortcuts and features can help you win back some of that precious time.
Not only will these help you save time, but they’ll also give you insights faster, so you’ll be on your way to better results even sooner.
As accounts mature or change management over time, it can be easy to lose track of what keywords are being bid on.
This is especially true when one account manager structures campaigns and ad groups a certain way, and then another manager takes over and starts implementing their own structure.
It would be time-consuming to comb through all the account keywords to find duplicates.
Luckily, the Google Ads Editor has a very handy feature that will do this for you!
You can access it from the top menu under Tools.
Screenshot from Google Ads, December 2023The duplicate keywords tool gives you many options so you can be intentional in how it defines duplicate keywords.
For example, you can choose a strict word order or any word order.
You may want to choose a strict word order if you’re mostly concerned with Exact Match keywords.
But any word order can be a great way to clear out broad match searches or phrases that are just the same words in a different order.
Screenshot from Google Ads, December 2023Another helpful option to be mindful of is the one for Location of duplicates.
An example of why you might want it only looking at certain groups would be if you have campaigns that are duplicates but set to show to different devices or different geographies.
They’re intentionally duplicated in those instances, so you’d only want to check for duplicates within each individual campaign.
Since we’re on the topic of keywords, let’s switch to a feature that will help you organize negative keywords in an account.
Negative keyword lists are a great way to exclude specific categories of keywords across multiple campaigns or the entire account.
As with trying to find duplicate keywords, it can be time-consuming to go through all the negative keywords that have been added to a campaign or ad group over time.
Negative keyword lists allow you to group certain keywords together into a list and can then be attached to different campaigns.
You can find this in the Google Ads online interface by going to Tools and settings >> Shared Library >> Negative keyword lists.
Screenshot from Google Ads, December 2023For example, you may already have a huge list of irrelevant keywords that you wouldn’t want to show up for any campaign.
Create an “Irrelevant Keywords” (or whatever you choose to name it) list, and apply that keyword list to all campaigns in the account.
Another example of how to use negative keyword lists is to separate Branded terms from Non-Branded terms.
Simply create a negative keyword list of all Brand terms, searches, or phrases and attach that list to all Non-Brand campaigns.
This ensures that there’s no crossover between Brand and Non-Brand performance.
The Label function in Google Ads is a powerhouse for account organization and time-saving.
In my opinion, it’s one of the most under-appreciated features in Google Ads.
While labels can be added to a campaign, ad group, and keyword level, using them for time-sensitive copy or routine testing to turn things off/on is where it shines!
It is also a huge help if you want to compare higher-level messaging or before/after efforts with copy tests.
You can add a label to any ad copy by checking the box next to the ad copy versions you want to label and then choosing Label in the blue toolbar that appears:
Screenshot from Google Ads, December 2023You can then check the labels you want to apply to those ads or create a new Label.
In this example, they want to easily test a new message related to a specific promotion happening on their website. There isn’t an easy way to see a comparison without filtering for each ad type.
Labeling each ad quickly makes it easier!
You can then just go into Reports > Pre-defined Reports and choose the option for Labels.
Then, you can just see the Label groups and apply the metrics you want to check out.
Another handy way to use Labels and ads is for scheduling.
After you label the ads as outlined above, select the ones that you want to turn on for a certain date and time. Check the box next to the ads, and then go to the blue toolbar and click on Edit.
From here, you can create rules for all the ads you selected with all kinds of timing and condition parameters.
You’d repeat this step each time you want something to turn off and then also to turn on.
Screenshot from Google Ads, December 2023Speaking of streamlining ad creation and testing, another handy way to do this is by using the Experiments feature.
This is located under the Experiments section, which is in the toolbar just to the left of your main pane.
Screenshot from Google Ads, December 2023Click on the “All experiments” section, and then click the blue “plus” (+) button to start creating your own custom experiment.
Screenshot from Google Ads, December 2023From there, you’ll be able to choose from multiple options:
Screenshot from Google Ads, December 2023One of the things I love about this option is you have the ability to set up the percentage split of your audience.
It can help you force a 50/50 split, whereas in regular ad testing, Google auto-optimizes.
Another thing I love about experiments is that it’s easy to indicate if there’s a clear winner.
Screenshot from Google Ads, December 2023In the example above, one of the experiments run showed a statistically significant change in clicks. This made it an easy decision to apply the experiment to the original campaign for better performance.
Keeping a log of an account history can be tough in Google Ads. There are so many moving parts, outside things that influence results, and then multiple people managing an account over its lifespan.
This can create issues when trying to analyze performance.
For example, you’re looking at year-over-year data and notice the numbers were so much better the previous year. Why?
It could be due to certain holidays that fall on different dates each year.
Or, maybe the brand got a huge PR bump that caused a lot of attention and searching.
Using Notes can help you log that external history and save tons of time trying to dig and piece together this kind of analysis.
How do you add Notes?
First, simply click on the performance graph in the Campaign or Ad Group view.
When you hover on the graph line, the date and performance metrics appear, along with a blue Add Note option. You can type your note in that.
Screenshot from Google Ads, December 2023Once you have notes in the account, they will appear as a little square along the dateline of the graph.
Screenshot from Google Ads, December 2023Clicking on it will show you the notes left and the date they were made.
A key feature that is often forgotten about is the ability to add audiences to campaigns.
Why is this important?
It’s no secret that Google is trying more and more to understand the intent and context of a user search. Not just the showing ads for the exact search term matched.
What used to be reserved for more upper funnel campaigns like Display and YouTube audiences can now be added to Search campaigns as well.
Before going too wild and narrowing down your campaigns to specific audiences, it’s wise to add different audience signals in “Observation Mode” to campaigns.
This allows Google to gather data on how those audience segments perform in a campaign against others who are not part of that audience segment.
If you’re in the information-gathering stage, this is a no-brainer to efficiently gain insights as to who is interacting with your ads.
Audiences can be added at the campaign or ad group level.
Once you’re in the specified campaign or ad group, choose “Audiences” on the left-hand menu.
Screenshot from Google Ads, December 2023From there, you’ll see a chart with a blue button: “Edit audience segments”:
You’ll be presented with a myriad of options to choose from, including:
Choose whatever audience segments that make sense for your campaigns, and then add as “Observation” to ensure that you’re not narrowing your targeting too quickly.
Screenshot from Google Ads, December 2023To see how those audiences perform, navigate back to the Audiences tab, and you’ll expand the table.
Google provides a breakdown of key metrics, including conversion metrics, for you to easily see how much more likely (or not likely) those audience segments are to purchase compared to users not identified as that audience.
If and when the time is right, you can switch audience targeting to “targeting only” if the data supports narrowing down to a specific niche.
Last but not least, the Insights and Recommendations tabs in Google Ads.
I’ve found these tabs to be a huge time-saver to help me identify key changes in performance week-over-week or month-over-month.
We’re all busy. It’s easy to miss high-level insights when we’re so “in the weeds” with our accounts every single day.
The Insights tab on the left-hand menu provides insights into an account as a whole or down to the campaign level.
Screenshot from Google Ads, December 2023It also drills down to other elements of a campaign, like search term insights or audience insights.
Knowing where to focus my time and effort from these insights saves a lot of time so I can focus on analyzing the problem and coming up with solutions.
The Recommendations tab is also found on the left-hand menu and provides a wide assortment of recommendations for your account.
This is also where an account’s “Optimization Score” lives, and applying or dismissing recommendations directly impacts that score.
I don’t recommend applying every recommendation that Google suggests just to increase the Optimization Score.
This tab is useful for account managers to look at the context of an account and easily apply recommendations that make sense.
Screenshot from Google Ads, December 2023These are usually broken down into categories:
For example, this recommendation suggests removing redundant keywords to more easily manage the account. Especially with match types loosening, applying this recommendation makes sense, and Google automatically does it for me.
Screenshot from Google Ads, December 2023That means I can spend more time strategizing and analyzing an account instead of doing the normal “busy work” of having to manually go in and review each keyword to decide what to pause.
There is a common theme among most of these suggestions you may have noticed:
Automation.
Google Ads is complex and can be time-consuming.
Administrative tasks can eat up a lot of time that would be better spent on things like strategy and higher-level decisions about PPC.
Take advantage of the tools Google gives you.
Test its automated bidding, review the insights and recommendations it gives you, and take the upfront time to create things that will make ongoing management a lot easier.
More resources:
Featured Image: eamesBot/Shutterstock
There’s been a lot of speculation of what Navboost is but to my knowledge nobody has pinpointed an adequate patent that could be the original Navboost patent. This patent from 2004 closely aligns with Navboost
So I took the few clues we have about it and identified a couple likely patents.
The clues I was working with are that Google Software Engineer Amit Singhal was involved with Navboost and had a hand in inventing it. Another clue is that Navboost dated to 2005. Lastly, the court documents indicate that Navboost was updated later on so there may be other patents in there about that, which we’ll get to at some point but not in this article.
So I deduced that if Amit Singhal was the inventor then there would be a patent with his name on it and indeed there is, dating from 2004.
Out of all the patents I saw, the two most interesting were these:
This article will deal with the first one, Systems and methods for correlating document topicality and popularity dating from 2004, which aligns with the known timeline of Navboost dating to 2005.
An interesting quality of this patent is that it doesn’t mention clicks and I suspect that people looking for the Navboost patent may have ignored it because it doesn’t mention clicks.
But the patent discusses concepts related to user interactions and navigational patterns which are references to clicks.
Document Selection and Retrieval:
The patent describes a process where a user selects documents (which can be inferred as clicking on them) from search results. These selections are used to determine the documents’ popularity.
Mapping Documents to Topics:
After documents are selected by users (through clicks), they are mapped to one or more topics. This mapping is a key part of the process, as it associates documents with specific areas of interest or subjects.
User Navigational Patterns:
The patent frequently refers to user navigational patterns, which include how users interact with documents, such as the documents they choose to click on. These patterns are used to compute popularity scores for the documents.
It’s clear that user clicks are a fundamental part of how the patent proposes to assess the popularity of documents.
By analyzing which documents users choose to interact with, the system can assign popularity scores to these documents. These scores, in combination with the topical relevance of the documents, are then used to enhance the accuracy and relevance of search engine results.
The patent US8595225 makes implicit references to “user clicks” in the context of determining the popularity of documents. Heck, popularity is so important to the patent that it’s in the name of the patent: Systems and methods for correlating document topicality and popularity
User clicks, in this context, refers to the interactions of users with various documents, such as web pages. These interactions are a critical component in establishing the popularity scores for these documents.
The patent describes a method where the popularity of a document is inferred from user navigational patterns, which can only be clicks.
I’d like to stop here and mention that Matt Cutts has discussed in a video that Popularity and PageRank are two different things. Popularity is about what users tend to prefer and PageRank is about authority as evidenced by links.
Matt defined popularity:
“And so popularity in some sense is a measure of where people go whereas PageRank is much more a measure of reputation.”
That definition from about 2014 fits what this patent is talking about in terms of popularity being about where people go.
See Matt Cutts Explains How Google Separates Popularity From True Authority
Watch the YouTube Video: How does Google separate popularity from authority?
The patent describes multiple ways that it uses popularity scores.
Assigning Popularity Scores:
The patent discusses assigning popularity scores to documents based on user interactions such as the frequency of visits or navigation patterns (Line 1).
Per-Topic Popularity:
It talks about deriving per-topic popularity information by correlating the popularity data associated with each document to specific topics (Line 5).
Popularity Scores in Ranking:
The document describes using popularity scores to order documents among one or more topics associated with each document (Line 13).
Popularity in Document Retrieval:
In the context of document retrieval, the patent outlines using popularity scores for ranking documents (Line 27).
Determining Popularity Based on User Navigation:
The process of determining the popularity score for each document, which may involve using user navigational patterns, is also mentioned (Line 37).
These instances demonstrate the patent’s focus on incorporating the popularity of documents, as determined by user interaction (clicks), into the process of ranking and correlating them to specific topics.
The approach outlined in the patent suggests a more dynamic and user-responsive method of determining the relevance and importance of documents in search engine results.
I’m going to stop here to also mention that this patent mentions assigning scores to documents, which is how Google executive Eric Lehman described in the trial how Navboost worked:
Speaking about the situation where there wasn’t a lot of click data, Lehman testified:
“And so I think Navboost does kind of the natural thing, which is, in the face of that kind of uncertainty, you take gentler measures. So you might modify the score of a document but more mildly than if you had more data.”
That’s another connection to Navboost in that the trial description and the patent describe using User Interaction for scoring webpages.
The more this patent is analyzed, the more it looks like what the trial documents described as Navboost.
Read the patent here:
Systems and methods for correlating document topicality and popularity
Featured Image by Shutterstock/Sabelskaya
Social media isn’t just for sharing memes and cat videos. It can be a useful tool to boost your sales or get more subscriptions. Just think about it: billions of users are scrolling through various social media platforms everyday. If you know how to reach them, you’ll be increasing your sales while connecting with your audience. Want to know how? Just read on!
Let’s quickly look at the benefits before we dive into the how. Because there are plenty! For example, social media is an affordable way to reach your audience across multiple platforms. You won’t need a big budget in order to have a successful social media strategy.
Social media is also the preferred platform for most people to receive news about your new products or services, according to 68% of consumers. And one of the reasons for this is that social media feels more personal. The communication lines feel shorter. Which is important, because most people say that the most memorable brands on social media are the ones that respond to customers.
Because your audience is. They’re buying more and more on social media marketplaces. In 2023, sales were expected to reach $1.3 trillion dollars, which is huge. Especially compared to 2020, when sales reached ‘just’ $560 billion dollars.
It’s clear that the industry is growing rapidly, so why not take advantage and make your products or services available on social media? A few popular ones are Facebook Shop, TikTok Shop, Instagram Shopping, and Pinterest Product Pins. And there are many more, so we suggest researching which ecommerce platforms work best for you and your audience.
Have you ever received a promotional code or discount in your direct messages (DMs)? Or perhaps you’ve asked a question about a product via WhatsApp? That’s conversational commerce.
So, why should you try this? Because for your audience, it can feel like they’re talking to a store employee in-person, except virtually. They can ask questions, and receive advice and recommendations. Conversational commerce also simplifies the buyer journey. Your audience can read reviews, explore products, ask questions, and hit the checkout button without ever having to go somewhere else.
So, what’s the difference? Mostly, the place where the sale happens. Conversational commerce is your Instagram DMs, for example, and social media commerce takes place in Instagram Shopping.
It sounds funny, but it’s true. There are good and bad moments to post on social media, but Sunday is by far the worst. That’s not to say you can never post on a Sunday – just that you’ll get more engagement if you post on a different day.
The best time to post differs per social media platform, so it’s good to be aware of what those times are. Otherwise, your audience won’t ever see your content. And that’s a shame!
In the same vein, it’s generally a good idea to become active on multiple social media platforms. After all, you want to reach as many people as possible. Not everyone in your audience uses Instagram – some might be very loyal Facebook users!
However, a large part of your audience uses more than one social media platform. This gives you plenty of opportunity to connect with them multiple times a day. Just don’t spread yourself too thin! You don’t want to copy and paste your content on every platform. Instead, it’s better to focus on a maximum of three social media platforms, and create good content for those.
So, what is good content? In the world of social media, this means content that your audience wants to share and engage with. Generally, this also means: images and videos. Last year, for example, online videos had an audience reach of 92.3% among internet users worldwide! The most popular videos were music videos, memes, and tutorial or how-to videos.
Of course, this doesn’t have to be the case for your audience. Perhaps they really like funny product pictures, or customer testimonials. Simply look at how many people like, comment, and share your product pictures versus your other content. Is it a lot more? Then you should make more!
And don’t forget to make your post accessible, so everyone can read and engage with your content.
If you keep up with trends, you’ll never be lost for content to create and post. Granted, you should be aware of what trends appeal to your audience. Referencing an exciting new change in the Lego company, for example, might not interest your audience of horse enthusiasts.
Global news, however, generally speaks to a lot more people. By referencing a recent global event, you could attract your audience’s attention and keep your brand relevant at the same time.
Always choose quality over quantity. If you worry that you might be prioritizing quantity, simply ask yourself the following questions:
Another tip that might help is creating a social media calendar. If you plan in advance how many times a week you’ll post and what you’ll post, then you don’t risk overwhelming your audience. Just keep some space for spontaneous posts. For example, when a meme has gone viral and you want to jump on the bandwagon.
Hopefully, you’ll feel inspired about how you can use your business’s social media in new ways. Perhaps you want to try conversational commerce? Maybe you want to create more content that references memes. Whatever it is, just be sure that you pick what fits your brand. Because in a world with millions of posts, you want your content to be uniquely yours.
Read more: Social Media Strategy: where to begin »
Cindy is a content manager at Yoast. She writes and optimizes blog posts, and enjoys writing content that will help people create better content for their site and users.
The global consumer class will expand by 109 million people in 2024. That’s according to “Beyond Borders 2024,” a report by Ebanx, the Brazil-based payments provider, addressing the digital economy in emerging markets.
The report highlights how digitization is transforming key industries and fostering economic growth, resulting in a more equitable landscape between emerging markets and developed economies.
Per the report, in 2024 India will contribute 34 million (31%) of the new consumers globally, surpassing the combined numbers from Europe, the Americas, and Africa, owing to the rise of ecommerce.
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For international corporations, rising markets present a significant avenue for digital growth. The data shows that while ecommerce is experiencing a 13% annual growth rate in developed nations (Europe and the U.S.), it’s advancing at 20% in rising markets (Southeast Asia, Africa, Latin America).
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A substantial portion of ecommerce in rising economies, particularly Latin America, is driven by international purchases. The data shows that cross-border transactions also play a significant role in the economies of Mexico, Chile, and South Africa.
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Moreover, according to the forecasts, by 2027 rising markets will account for roughly 40% of global B2B digital payments.