Print Ads Are an Ecommerce Opportunity

Print magazines can be an unusual opportunity for niche ecommerce merchants.

Digital advertising dominates ecommerce, with good reason. The ads are measurable, easily updated, and often produce instant results. Place an ad and get a sale on the same day.

In contrast, print advertising does not usually produce immediate results and is not easy to measure. Yet the medium has unique values that established marketers appreciate.

Take Amazon’s October 2024 printed toy catalog, for example.

“We’re not surprised to see Amazon leaning into their toy catalog,” said Polly Wong, president of Belardi Wong, a New Jersey-based marketing firm, in a correspondence with Practical Ecommerce.

“Hundreds of brands have added direct mail and catalogs to their mix over the last five years because print offers unique advantages to digital marketing — more real estate to show your product and entice consumers to buy, 100% reach, high lifetime value from customers who respond to print, and a very effective way to stand out to new customers.”

In essence, print promotions — such as catalogs or magazine ads — complement digital advertising.

Brand Advertising

Magazines and printed catalogs can provide valuable brand advertising, an often overlooked approach by ecommerce marketers.

Brand ads in a magazine tend to linger and get many “impressions.”

“An ad in print will sit in someone’s home or near someone’s desk for months upon months, sometimes even years,” wrote Troy Klongerbo, general manager at Homestead Living magazine, in an email interview.

To Klongerbo’s point, most magazine subscribers flip through the publication several times, repeatedly referring to articles and ads. His publication often includes recipes and reference material so that issues become “fixtures” in the kitchen or the shed.

Printed ads can also build trust. A company with a printed ad appears to be established and trustworthy.

“There’s a deeper implied trust with words and pictures placed in print. Once printed, words and messages cannot be altered, providing for a sort of permanence. Digital ads, even the best of them, are ephemeral to a degree,” wrote Klongerbo.

Indications

While short-lived, digital ads provide solid data, which print does not. An advertiser must be clever about collecting and analyzing print performance and willing to accept indications.

Many print advertisers use several performance indicators in combination.

• Brand lift surveys. Measure changes in brand awareness, consideration, and favorability after exposure to brand advertising campaigns.

• Social media engagement. Monitor mentions, shares, and sentiment related to the brand, especially when an issue is first published.

• Website traffic. Pay attention to website traffic and engagement metrics. An increase in direct or branded search visits often indicates that print advertising is working.

• Share of voice. Compares the brand’s advertising or marketing presence against competitors within a specific market or industry.

• Direct response. Finally, thanks to coupon codes, subdomains, and QR codes, magazines and catalogs can capture some direct response data, but this, too, is indicative, not definitive. Ten scanned QR code visits may represent 100 consumers.

Affiliates

Some print publications use this last form of measurement — direct response — to run affiliate ads for ecommerce brands.

This affiliate relationship is relatively new in print magazines, perhaps borne out of influencer marketing. Modern advertisers are often comfortable with influencer relationships combining flat-rate and affiliate payments.

For example, a direct-to-consumer brand might pay an influencer a nominal fee to produce an Instagram Reel and then pay affiliate commissions to the influencer for sales made with her discount code.

Similar arrangments now occur in print. The advertiser pays a low flat rate to help offset the cost of printing and distributing the ad and shares the revenue tracked via a QR code.

If a brand’s typical affiliate share is 15%, the publication might receive 30% to 50%, recognizing that some shoppers will search for the brand or type in its URL rather than using the QR code.

Complementary

Branded print advertising can positively impact digital. Countless published reports confirm that branding boosts performance ads, driving relatively more clicks, engagements, and conversions.

In short, printed and online ads are complementary approaches to achieving marketing objectives.

Outstanding Marketing Campaigns from 2024

Every December we publish a rundown of innovative marketing campaigns for the year. We handpick campaigns from established companies that have received awards and recognition or that we encountered directly.

Here is a list of outstanding marketing campaigns for 2024. The campaigns feature collaborations, dupes, celebrity spots, mobile apps, mascots, dance routines, pop-ups, and AI-powered videos.

Heineken – Boring Mode

In a campaign to help people socialize, Heineken released The Boring Mode app. With a single swipe, The Boring Mode turns a smartphone into a boring phone, blocking other social and work apps, notifications, and even the camera for a set period. During events, including the Amsterdam Dance Event and Live Out Festival in Mexico, Heineken activated hidden messages when people held up their mobile phones to encourage them to turn their smartphones boring and keep the moment in their memory, not on their phones.

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McDonald’s – McDonnell’s Chicken Big Mac Pop-Up

McDonald’s secretly introduced a Chicken Big Mac, a spin on the classic menu item through a dupe of an L.A. pop-up called McDonnell’s by Chain. McDonald’s also enlisted influencer Kai Cenat to stir debate on whether or not a Chicken Big Mac is a Big Mac. McDonald’s then launched the Chicken Big Mac on October 10, allowing followers to order the item and decide for themselves.

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Squarespace – Rick Rubin

Squarespace teamed up with creative visionary Rick Rubin, co-founder of Def Jam Recordings and former co-president of Columbia Records, to build Tetragrammaton, an online world of curated materials, and a new website template, Transmission. Inspired by Rubin’s Tetragrammaton, Transmission is a minimally designed, customizable framework for anyone to share their interests, with layouts showcasing audiovisual media and members-only content.

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Qatar Airways – Star in Your Own Adventure

Qatar Airways launched an AI-powered “Star in Your Own Adventure” campaign, in which viewers select from multiple scenes within a film to star in the leading roles. Through AI technology, the characters become a reflection of the viewer’s appearance, adapting to their facial features and skin tone. The immersive experience now offers holiday-centric moments, including an elf, snowman, gingerbread person, and cheerful characters, inviting participants to star in their personalized holiday-themed Qatar Airways film.

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Calvin Klein – Jeremy Allen White

Calvin Klein has launched its winter 2024 collection campaign, starring Jeremy Allen White from “The Bear” television series. This is the third global campaign with White. While the previous two focused on White in Calvin Klein’s emblematic underwear, the new campaign features classic, understated styles, demonstrating the brand’s ability to remain relevant and give fans what they want.

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Liquid Death – E.l.f. Cosmetics

Liquid Death canned water collaborated with E.l.f. Cosmetics to launch Corpse Paint. Liquid Death wants to help consumers “murder” their thirst and prefers irreverent and organic marketing over advertising. Brand collaborations allow Liquid Death to inject its spirit and provide the partner brand with an opportunity to expand and do something unexpected. The Corpse Paint collaboration captured more than 250 million social impressions. Other recent collaborations with Liquid Death include sparkling water with ice cream chain Van Leeuwen and a casket cooler with Yeti.

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Airbnb – Polly Pocket

Mattel is celebrating Polly Pocket‘s 35th birthday by making the pocket-sized doll an Airbnb host and opening her two-story Slumber Party Fun compact, a 42-foot-tall structure in Littleton, Massachusetts. Guests experienced a retro picnic, beauty fun with Polly’s vanity, fashion try-ons with Polly’s closet, slumber party fun in Polly’s Action Park Tent, and more. Guests booked stays for September 12 to 14. Polly’s home was also opened for 21 daytime experiences for up to 12 guests each from September 16 to October 6. Guests were responsible for travel to and from Littleton, Massachusetts. The location showed the popularity of Airbnb.

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Gap – “Get Loose” with Troye Sivan

Gap ran a fall 2024 campaign called “Get Loose,” which starred global pop star Troye Sivan and the dance group CDK Company. Set to Thundercat’s viral hit “Funny Thing,” the film features original choreography showcasing dancers in baggy and loose-fit denim. Sivan is known for his music videos, featuring elaborate and sometimes racy dance routines, and has a combined social following of over 39 million. As part of the campaign, Sivan created an in-store playlist on Spotify. With the Thundercat soundtrack, Gap is tapping into viral TikTok songs, celebrity ambassadors, and dance-heavy advertising to reach Gen Z consumers.

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Pop-Tarts – Edible Mascots

In 2023, Pop-Tarts signed a multi-year agreement to become the title sponsor of the college football Pop-Tarts Bowl game, originally commissioned as the Sunshine Classic. To celebrate the event, Pop-Tarts launched the “first edible mascot” last December. The Kansas State football team devoured a Frosted Strawberry mascot in a viral event on social media. For this year, the game’s MVP will select one of three flavors to “ascend to ‘mouth heaven.’” In the run-up to the game, consumers can guess the third flavor, purchase limited-edition Pop-Tarts Printed Fun Mascot Packs, and follow along on Instagram and TikTok.​​

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Coca-Cola – AI-powered Christmas Ads

Coca-Cola launched three short AI-generated video ads for Christmas, and the results have sparked backlash on social media and in the press. Three AI studios (Secret Level, Silverside AI, and Wild Card) produced the ads using the generative AI models Leonardo, Luma, Runway, and Kling. The ads highlight the weaknesses and limitations of current video-generation models, such as difficulties with proportionality and natural movement. While the ads are essentially derivatives of the Coca-Cola Christmas ads from 1995, the new AI-powered experiments have drawn much attention and sparked conversation, which is not necessarily bad.

Attributing Marketing Expenses by Channel

Some marketers now measure and attribute the cost of labor, technology, and services to individual promotional channels.

The concept is simple. Many companies track only revenue from marketing channels without considering the expense of managing them. The result is often misleading bottom-line performance.

Channel Comparison

Imagine a business with two marketing channels, A and B, each costing $1,000. Both generate 3,000 interactions from potential customers. However, Channel A converts at 2.5%, while Channel B converts at 4%.

If both channels had a $75 average order value and a 25% gross profit margin, Channel A would produce $406 in profit, and Channel B would earn $1,250. Channel B is the clear winner when compared in this way.

	Channel A	Channel B
Promotional Cost	$1,000	$1,000
Interactions	3,000	3,000
Conv. Rate	2.50%	4.00%
Orders	75	120
Avg. Order Value	$75	$75
Sales Generated	$5,625	$9,000
Margin	25%	25%
Gross Revenue	$1,406	$2,250
Profit	$406	$1,250

Just about every business would take the $1,000 invested in Channel A and double down on Channel B. After all, Channel B produces about three times as much profit.

This is often the proper choice, but not always.

Marketing Budgets

There’s more to marketing expenses than advertising or accessing a channel.

There are salaries for the marketing team, software subscriptions, creative design expenses, and even influencer fees.

Let’s apply this idea to Channel A and Channel B. Suppose each channel is a demand-side platform (DSP), wherein marketers choose from a list of potential publishers.

DSP A allows marketers to pick some basic targeting demographics, but there’s little a specialist could do to optimize performance. It is a set-it-and-forget-it sort of platform.

On the other hand, DSP B has 100 targeting options that can be compared, fine-tuned, and optimized.

DSP B’s platform provides real-time data with Slack notifications every time a campaign’s conversion rate changes.

The marketing specialist spends about 30 minutes a month setting up the simplistic DSP A but about an hour a day monitoring, studying, and tweaking DSP B.

If the marketing specialist earns $50 an hour, DSP A costs about $25 per month in labor. Given 20 working days a month and an hour per day spent monitoring and optimizing, DSP B takes $1,000 in labor to run.

When counting labor, DSP A generates $381 in profit compared to DSP B’s $250. DSP A is the clear winner.

	DSP A	DSP B
Promotional Cost	$1,000	$1,000
Interactions	3,000	3,000
Conv. Rate	2.50%	4.00%
Orders	75	120
Avg. Order Value	$75	$75
Sales Generated	$5,625	$9,000
Margin	25%	25%
Gross Revenue	$1,406	$2,250
Labor Cost	$25	$1,000
Profit	$381	$250

Applying the Concept

Beyond labor, other expenses — e.g., software, creative design, agency retainers — could also change a channel’s return on investment, although not every expense is ongoing. Some are one-time or upfront charges that go away.

Thus, when attributing marketing expenses by channel:

• Decide what to measure. Labor, software, or simply the cost of an ad or promotion?

• Choose when to measure. Should the channel be measured per interaction? Or would monthly work better?

• Plan for upfront expenses. Should upfront expenses be amortized? If so, over what period? How will channels with amortized costs compare with those having ongoing expenses?

• Manage sensitive information. Some costs are sensitive or private. Will salaries be shared, or will the labor portion of the equation be closely held?

• Decide how you will measure. Should marketers use time-tracking software?

• Document the process. Record what, when, and how results are measured.

• Collect only essential data. There’s no need to track labor or software costs if they don’t impact marketing decisions.

Lastly, remember that sometimes the cure can be worse than the illness. Attributing expenses by channel can drive performance at the cost of damaging staff morale. So attribute with prudence.

Optimized Landing Pages Reduce Ad Costs

Optimizing a website for organic search rankings is well-known. Less common is optimizing for ad engines, crucial for managing the cost and effectiveness of paid traffic.

Ad targeting on social media and search engines relies on algorithms that bid for placements on advertisers’ behalf. Algorithms evaluate an ad and its linked landing page, assigning a relevancy score that influences the cost and performance. Meta calls the score “Quality Rank”; Google refers to it as “Ad Rank.” Both prioritize the relevance of an ad to the landing page.

Bidding engines on Meta, Google, and others optimize around a goal, typically conversions (for ecommerce). Low click rates on ads drive up their costs, as do landing experiences with low conversions.

But an optimized experience can reduce ad costs. Note the chart below showing my firm’s A/B test on Meta. The test traffic was split: half went to a standard ecommerce product page and half to an ad-engine-optimized version. Both used the same ad and budget. The optimized experience received 28% more traffic due to lower per-impression ad costs and drove 99% more revenue than the product page.

3 AEO Hacks

Ad engine optimization (AEO) prioritizes the relevance of a landing page to an ad. Little relevance produces high bounce rates and low conversions. Ad engines detect this and penalize the campaign with higher ad costs. Custom landing pages are the traditional fix. They work well for bottom-of-funnel and long-running campaigns but not for top-of-funnel customer acquisition, especially on social media.

For example, a shopper searching Google for a “red four-slot toaster” has a clear purchase intent and would likely convert from a landing page featuring red four-slot toasters.

But a consumer on Facebook might see an aspirational kitchen ad that happens to feature a red four-slot toaster, requiring a different landing approach.

Consider these AEO hacks:

• Mirror campaign creative. The simplest way to increase relevance is to mirror the images in the ad onto the landing page. This reassures shoppers they are in the right place, preventing an early bounce.

• Make it easy to buy all of the products. The top reason shoppers bounce is they can’t find the product, or it looks different. Incredibly, landing pages without the promoted products are common. It’s especially problematic on mobile, where the product may be swipes away from where the shopper lands. Hence ensure the landing page shows all products in the ad, not just the category or one item.

• Enable all intents. An ad showing a model on a beach wearing a t-shirt, shorts, and a hat could drive multiple interests: the t-shirt, shorts, summer, beachwear, or more. A landing experience focused on just one of those items will result in high bounces.

An optimized page makes it easy to buy, say, the advertised t-shirt while providing easy navigation to the other products. The page simultaneously shows all products in the ad and draws visitors into the broader category. The more visitors that browse, the more signals return to the ad engine, increasing the relevance score and lowering ad costs.

Algorithm Driven

To function, optimized pages require implementing the ad engine’s conversion API (“CAPI” for Meta and Google) to send the engagement signals. Testing and evolving the AEO experience is helpful — manually or automated.

Advertising on Meta, Google, and other channels is now algorithm-driven. Improving performance means optimizing for the algorithm. The combined quality of the ad and landing page directly impacts ad costs.

Google’s Cookie Reversal Raises Questions

Google announced on July 22, 2024, that it would not remove third-party tracking cookies from the Chrome browser after all, leaving many advertisers to wonder, “What now?”

“We are proposing an updated approach [to tracking cookie depreciation] that elevates user choice,” wrote Anthony Chavez, Google’s Privacy Sandbox vice president. “Instead of deprecating third-party cookies, we would introduce a new experience in Chrome that lets people make an informed choice that applies across their web browsing.”

Privacy advocates have warned for decades about the tiny bits of code we lovingly call cookies since, when placed in a web browser, they could track individuals across websites, Google search queries, location, and other behaviors.

Yet third-party or tracking cookies have legitimate uses for cross-site personalization, targeted advertising, and website analytics.

Regardless, all this data collection means Google, Criteo, and others know loads about nearly every person online, making “internet privacy” a thin veneer.

Thus Google has promised for roughly five years to remove tracking cookies, but no more. The reversal has advertisers and industry observers questioning the future.

Here are five aspects to monitor.

Will Regulators Approve?

Google’s plan to keep cookies and its Privacy Sandbox must still pass regulatory muster.

Simon Poulton, executive vice president of innovation and growth at Tinuiti, a marketing firm, wrote to Practical Ecommerce in an email that regulatory approval was the “elephant in the room” when discussing Google’s decision.

Google faces scrutiny from governmental agencies interested in consumer privacy while also negotiating with agencies that rely on cookies and fear their elimination enhances Google’s own ad platform.

This latter group includes the U.K.’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), which is investigating Google’s Privacy Sandbox. The CMA was concerned that ad targeting via the Sandbox (Topics API, for example) extended Google’s dominance in the digital advertising industry.

Referring to a briefing Tinuiti released in April of this year, Poulton wrote, “As part of our coverage, we noted that privacy and competition are in direct, insoluble tension.”

“We went so far as to suggest that Google would be unable to move on an absolute deprecation (and transition to the Privacy Sandbox) under the current circumstances,” continued Poulton.

Given Google’s announcement, this seems to have been the case.

For its part, the CMA noted on its website, “The CMA will now work closely with the [Information Commissioner’s Office] to carefully consider Google’s new approach to Privacy Sandbox.”

Thus Chrome, third-party cookies, and the Privacy Sandbox can likely proceed as Google’s Chavez proposes, but there’s no certainty.

Does Google Benefit?

The CMA and others have argued that Google’s Privacy Sandbox would have strengthened the company’s position in the ad business since targeting would rely on its technology.

“The fear is that Google’s new [Sandbox] framework might limit competition by making it more challenging for other companies to operate effectively in the ad space,” wrote Piotr Korzeniowski, CEO of Piwik Pro, an analytics platform, in an email.

But others argue that tracking cookies fuel Google’s existing ad business.

So which is it?

“Google is in a precarious position to own the most popular browser, advertising network, and many more ‘most popular’ digital products and services,” wrote Korzeniowski.

Hence Google’s decision to keep cookies and still move forward with the Privacy Sandbox presumably wasn’t so much about what benefited its own ad business as taking a balanced approach for its entire company, customers, and regulators.

Industry Preference?

Assume that all the various regulatory bodies, whether focused on privacy or competition, approve of Google’s “new path for Privacy Sandbox on the web.” Will industry participants such as Tinuiti and Piwik Pro choose cookies or the Sandbox?

“As privacy awareness increases, more users are expected to opt out of cookies, especially with more stringent regulations, clearer opt-out mechanisms, and rising consumer awareness of the topic,” Korzeniowski added. “Google’s plan to integrate the consent mechanism into browsers is a bold move. However, they did not plan this without ensuring it wouldn’t significantly impact their data collection and advertising business. I bet they will keep opt-ins above 70% because of how they design the mechanism.”

Walled Gardens

Third-party tracking differs from first-party. For example, TikTok does not require a tracking cookie to know what interests visitors; it has first-party data.

Tinuiti’s Poulton wrote, “Keep in mind that [third-party] cookies have no bearing on search or social (or any walled garden) tracking or advertising performance. So, while this is big news, I constantly remind folks that many advertisers on Meta, Amazon, and Google-owned platforms would not see any impact from [third-party] cookie deprecation, anyway.”

One could argue that even those platforms benefit from third-party data, but Instagram and Facebook advertisers, for example, are not likely impacted much in the near term.

However, eliminating tracking cookies would disrupt many others, such as services that place ads on publisher websites, email messages, and streaming videos.

Advertisers

The final takeaway from Google’s cookie announcement is that digital advertising is changing: We could have both cookies and the Sandbox. What worked five years ago may not now or in the future.

What won’t change is the value of first-party data. That’s what advertisers should focus on in this new advertising era.

Google’s Cookie Delay Reveals Industry Fears

Google announced last month that it would delay the end of third-party cookies in Chrome until early 2025, as regulators in the United Kingdom raised concerns that alternatives could give the search giant an unfair advertising advantage.

The delay could also indicate that the advertising industry is not ready for the end of tracking cookies in the world’s most popular browser.

Regulatory Concern

The U.K.’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) prompted Google to delay the demise of tracking cookies because it was concerned that the company’s Privacy Sandbox — the replacement for third-party cookies in Chome — would give Google Ads a competitive advantage.

The delay is supposed to allow the folks at Google time to work with the CMA and meet multiple demands, including:

• No competitive advantage to Google’s own ad products and services versus competitors.

• More collaboration. Google must release a cookie alternative that benefits the entire advertising ecosystem.

• Data protection to ensure privacy advocates are satisfied with Google’s Privacy Sandbox.

• Testing and reporting. Google will provide evidence that its cookie alternatives are effective and don’t negatively impact its competitors.

In its published response, Google stated, “We recognize that there are ongoing challenges related to reconciling divergent feedback from the industry, regulators, and developers, and will continue to engage closely with the entire ecosystem. It’s also critical that the CMA has sufficient time to review all evidence, including results from industry tests, which the CMA has asked market participants to provide by the end of June. Given both of these significant considerations, we will not complete third-party cookie deprecation during the second half of Q4.”

Privacy Challenge

In addition to regulatory concerns, privacy advocates had asked Google to delay the release of its Privacy Sandbox, believing it’s not much better than third-party cookies.

Some fear the Privacy Sandbox — despite collecting less information about individuals and offering alternative ways to deliver targeted advertising — enables Chrome to act like an ad server and concentrates data storage within the Google ecosystem.

Delaying the release is meant to address those concerns.

Advertising

Google announced in 2022 that it would eliminate tracking cookies in Chrome. Other web browsers have discontinued those cookies without much fanfare, but Chome is different.

According to Statista, Chome had a dominant 65.7% share of the worldwide browser market in February 2024.

Thus much of digital advertising will change when Chrome finally removes tracking cookies, impacting multiple sectors:

• Chrome users. Third-party cookies facilitate ad targeting — showing folks relevant and interesting ads.

• Ad networks. Companies in the business of delivering ads, including Meta, Criteo, and similar, will “lose signal,” meaning they will have relatively less behavioral data for ad targeting.

• Advertisers. Signal loss likely means ads become less effective and more expensive, similar to the effect of Apple removing tracking in iOS 14.5 in 2021.

The Privacy Sandbox was supposed to address these advertising concerns, delivering relevant ads to benefit users and advertisers.

Hence this most recent delay — prompted by regulators (focused on competition) and privacy advocates — may indicate that the advertising industry is not ready to give up tracking cookies.

For example, while some complain that the Privacy Sandbox retains too much data in the Google ecosystem, alternatives have the same problem. Examples include Liveramp’s Authenticated Traffic Solution and Criteo’s Commerce Media Platform, both of which are advertising platforms. Even Unified ID 2.0, the open-source alpha-numeric identifier, gets much of its support from The Trade Desk, a platform for advertisers.

Better Alternatives?

Bottom line, the advertising industry faces a complex challenge in transitioning away from third-party cookies, a system deeply embedded in digital advertising.

As they explore replacements such as the Privacy Sandbox, Google and other stakeholders confront the technical and competitive implications and the industry’s reluctance to adapt to fundamentally different alternatives.

While better for user privacy, these new technologies introduce complexity and fragmentation that could lead to less effective advertising outcomes and steep implementation hurdles.

The ongoing delays signify a market cautious about relinquishing a tried-and-tested mechanism without clear and proven alternatives.

Web Marketing Checklist: 42 Tactics for Traffic and Sales

Businesses looking for more traffic and sales turn to marketing. This checklist of potent marketing tactics is a starting point for success.

Search Engine Optimization

Search engine optimization communicates a page’s purpose and relevance to Google and others to help align user queries with results.

Technical SEO is a critical subset that addresses a website’s structure so that search engine bots can efficiently crawl and index its pages. Unlike other strategies that concentrate on content and link building, technical SEO involves behind-the-scenes work.

1. Improve Core Web Vitals

Google launched Core Web Vitals (CWVs) in 2020 to help developers and website owners understand how it thinks about user experience. CWVs are evolving standards for page speed, interactivity, and visual stability. Until March 2024, the CWVs included three metrics:

• Largest Contentful Paint to measure loading performance,
• First Input Delay to measure interactivity,
• And Cumulative Layout Shift to measure visual stability.

Google announced last year that it would replace First Input Delay with Interaction to Next Paint in March 2024. Google Search Console reports CWVs, and site owners should use them as the gold standard for website performance. CWVs directly impact how Google ranks websites.

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2. Focus on mobile

Smartphones are the dominant internet device worldwide. Hence in 2015, Google released a “mobile-friendly” update to show in search results more web pages that look and function well on mobile devices. A year later, in 2016, Google started crawling and indexing mobile-first.

A website should meet or exceed Google’s CWVs thresholds on a mobile device. Doing so will clear a significant ranking hurdle.

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3. Include structured data markup

Structured data helps search engines understand and classify a web page. It also assists with voice and AI-generated search. Structured data markup can take three forms: JSN-LD, RDFa, and microdata. Schema.org is a helpful resource.

Structured data markup on an ecommerce product page can identify the item’s price, image, availability, shipping options, and return information, enabling Google and other search engines to provide relatively better and more visual results.

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4. Build a robots.txt file

Here is a tip for websites with thousands of pages: Use a robots.txt file to manage the crawl budget. Google and other search engines balance indexing web pages quickly without overwhelming their (the search engines’) servers. “Crawl budget” describes the number of pages Googlebot will access on a site in a given time frame.

The robots.txt file tells the search bot which pages it should focus on. Thus, you can help the bot avoid duplicate content, resources like files or images, and similar issues. There is no guarantee the bot will crawl only what you want, but it can help.

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5. Publish a sitemap

Every website, large and small, should have a sitemap.

Sitemaps provide search engines with a list of all indexable pages, making it easier to find and crawl and likely speed up indexing. An owner can publish sitemaps specifically for pages, images, videos, and even news in some cases.

Most content management systems or related extensions will automatically generate well-formed sitemaps, but they must still be submitted to search engines. With Google, this is done in the Search Console.

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6. Confirm indexing

Google Search Console is not just for Core Web Vitals and sitemaps. It’s an excellent tool for confirming a site’s pages are indexed. Common problems preventing indexing include:

• Server errors (5xx).
• Redirect errors.
• Improper blocking in robots.txt.
• Not found (404) errors, meaning Googlebot couldn’t find a page.
• “Soft 404” wherein Google interprets the page as a 404 even though it doesn’t return a 404 status code.
• General crawl anomalies where Googlebot encountered unspecified errors.

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7. Replace or update broken links

Broken links on a website provide a poor user experience and can negatively impact a site’s organic search rankings. Regular website audits can find and fix or replace broken links, ensuring both search engines and users can access content without issues. Search Console can help, as can specialized broken link checkers in Ahrefs, Semrush, and others.

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8. Remove or resurrect zombie pages

In the SEO context, “zombies” refer to web pages that exist on a site but add little to no value. Zombie pages might be outdated, have duplicate content, or no longer align with the site’s goals. The pages can negatively impact SEO by diluting the site’s authority and wasting crawl budget — especially for sites with thousands of pages.

Identifying and dealing with these pages — either updating or removing them — is crucial for maintaining a healthy, SEO-friendly website.

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9. Use HTTPS

Search engines prefer secure websites and may rank a secure site above a non-secure one when all other ranking factors are equal. The reason is simple. Search engines want to protect users.

“HTTPS helps prevent intruders from tampering with the communications between your websites and users’ browsers. Intruders include intentionally malicious attackers and legitimate but intrusive companies, such as ISPs or hotels that inject ads into pages,” wrote Kayce Basques of Google’s Chrome Dev Team.

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10. Produce clean, accessible URLs

Your site’s URLs should be keyword-rich, unique, and brief. The path should also be easy for a person to read, accessible to users with disabilities, and free of clutter. A URL consists of three parts: the domain, the sub-domain, and the slug.

https://subdomain.domain.tld/slug

The domain is the name of the site. It can be helpful to have a keyword in the domain name. The subdomain is still part of your site, but Google and other search engines may treat a subdomain as a separate entity when considering site authority. So be careful how you use subdomains.

The slug is the part of the URL that describes the particular page in view. It may include the year, category, or similar, but it should also describe the specific page in view. The slug for this article, for example, is checklist.

Separate words in the slug with hyphens, remove articles and propositions such as “the” and “of,” and avoid using a keyword more than once. Google hates keyword stuffing.

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11. Optimize images

Optimizing images offers at least three benefits for technical SEO.

• Site speed. Optimize for performance.
• Context. Include keywords in alt tags and captions to assist search bots in understanding the image.
• Links. Users search for images related to a topic. Linking the company’s website drives traffic.

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Link Building Strategies

Search engines such as Google treat inbound links as a measure of authority. Links are important for top rankings, but obtaining links can be a lot of work.

12. Ask colleagues for a link

Recently, a family member self-published a book on Amazon. She shared the link with everyone in the family. I bought the book, becoming her first customer. Marketers can do the same thing with links. New online shops can ask suppliers, top customers, and agencies to mention the business in a blog post or article and link to the site. Just be sure that the friend you ask has a clean and respected domain.

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13. Help out a reporter

Help a Reporter Out (HARO) connects journalists with sources for their stories. By responding to journalists’ queries, individuals and companies can get their names and expertise featured in articles and publications.

This exposure often includes a backlink to the source’s website. It’s a good way to get quality, authoritative backlinks from reputable news sites or industry blogs. These links can significantly boost a site’s visibility and search engine rankings.

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14. Create broken link alternatives

A broken link points to a page that is no longer available. Sites should avoid them. Use tools such as the W3C’s Link Checker, Dead Link Checker, PowerMapper’s SortSite, Ahrefs, or Semrush to create a list of sites with broken links. Next, create content that genuinely replaces the no-longer-available content. Then contact each publisher. Point out the broken link and ask her to consider your new and fresh content as a replacement.

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15. Help out a blogger

Blogging and email newsletter writing are experiencing a renaissance thanks to growth in the creator economy. And every one of those creators needs something to write about. As a link-building strategy, identify top bloggers and newsletter creators in your company’s industry. Reach out to them, offering resources and topic ideas.

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16. Unlinked mentions

Positive mentions of your business on other websites or social media raise visibility and otherwise send shoppers your way. Those mentions can also be an SEO link-building opportunity. Try to find unlinked mentions using a search engine or a monitoring service such as Mention, Ahrefs Alert, or Awario. Then contact the site owner with those mentions, thank him, and ask for a link.

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17. Link from sites you control or influence

This is a longstanding and still effective technique. In a video (below) describing how to get the first few links for a site, Rand Fishkin — founder of Moz, SparkToro, and SnackBar Studios — explains how to search Google for the name of your business or the name of its founders to identify sites you might influence, to obtain a direct link.

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18. Guest blogging

Guest blogging benefits both the contributor and the host site. It’s one of the most challenging yet rewarding ways to build inbound links. Guest bloggers identify industry-related websites and then contact the owner, pitch the article, and earn a link. It sounds straightforward; just expect to receive a “no” 50 times for one “yes.”

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Content Marketing

Content marketing is the act of creating or curating content and then publishing or broadcasting it. Content drives SEO, social media posts, and email newsletters.

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19. Put the keyword in the page title

For each page on your site, write a descriptive, accurate, and engaging title that includes the primary keyword phrase for which the content should rank. Think of the title tag as an advertising headline. It will help your page rank in search engines and encourage humans to investigate.

“The title tag is typically the most weighted on-page element, so it’s important that you optimize it correctly,” said SEO practitioner Greg Gifford in a lecture from Semrush’s Academy’s SEO Fundamentals Course. “Remember, this will be the blue link on the search result page.”

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20. Lead with the keyword phrase

Position your keywords early in titles, headings, and the first few sentences. It helps readers and search engines identify the topic.

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21. Build topic clusters

Content topic clusters begin with a comprehensive “pillar” page linked to detailed “cluster” pages addressing specific aspects. This structure communicates to search engines the depth and breadth of a site’s content on particular subjects. Plus, topic clusters distribute link equity from the pillar to the cluster pages. This tactic has been around for years and is still one of the best ways to encourage organic website traffic.

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22. Use the help-hub-hero tactic

Help-hub-hero content provides answers and solutions to a target audience’s questions and challenges. It also establishes expertise and trust in the merchant publishing it.

• Help content is typically detailed and instructional, such as guides, FAQs, tutorials, and explainer articles or videos. For example, craft retailer Michael’s has published over 600 classes on its YouTube channel and website, helping customers and prospects learn a skill or complete a project.

• Hub (or “hygiene”) content keeps your audience coming back. It consists of recurring material such as blog posts, videos, podcasts, and email newsletters that align with your audience’s interests. It acts as a hub — thus the name — for your community, fostering engagement by providing value.

• Hero content is the blockbuster that captures wide attention and showcases your brand. It’s ambitious, often longer than help or hub content, and aims to impact a broad audience. Hero content includes viral videos, extensive guides, groundbreaking research, or information that stands out for its creativity, quality, and ability to engage and drive immediate attention to your site.

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23. Delve into definitions

There are at least two ways to incorporate definitions into a content marketing strategy. The first is “what is” articles such as dictionaries or glossaries — competing for a top spot on search result pages for a target term and also optimizing for voice or generative AI. For example, an online store selling outdoor adventure gear could publish a glossary of “Adventure Racing Jargon” with definitions for “TA” (transition area), “bikewhacking,” and “dotwatcher.”

A second way is to include a definition at the top of an article. An online guitar boutique with an article teaching “Travis picking” could start it with a definition, such as “Named after musician Merle Travis. Travis picking is a fingerpicking technique for the guitar that features alternating bass notes struck with the thumb while playing treble notes using any of the other fingers.”

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24. Include FAQ sections

Done well, content builds trust, explains complex products or topics succinctly, and earns prominent search engine rankings. A section for frequently asked questions on your site or product detail pages can accomplish all these.

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25. Produce a podcast

Podcasts can be a highly effective promotional tool, an opportunity to engage with customers and prospects. The audio (or video) format allows for deep storytelling, putting a voice (or face) to your business while directing listeners (or viewers) to your site.

A podcast can also be a source for more content, such as a show-notes article, social media posts, or a newsletter. And podcasts breed inbound links, especially from guest interviewees.

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26. Construct calculators

Businesses have long used calculators for content marketing and conversions. For example, marketing guru Ryan Pearson noted, “One particularly effective type of interactive marketing content is the calculator. Calculators allow users to estimate their potential savings, returns on investment, or other financial metrics. This type of content can be extremely valuable to users, especially those making important financial decisions.”

Retail, B2B, and direct-to-consumer companies use calculators. For example, Lowes.com contains a mulch and soil calculator that estimates the required material for a gardening project.

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27. Create a newsletter

Editorial newsletters are the new blogs. For example, Brian Dean of Backlinko noted in March 2024 that Substack — a newsletter platform with social-media-like features — was home to more than 17,000 editorial email newsletters. Newsletters combine content marketing with email, one of the most powerful marketing mediums.

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28. Promote on social media

Promotion is an essential aspect of content marketing. An effective strategy is repurposing long-form articles or podcast episodes into smaller social updates. For example, a listicle or video podcast containing 10 ways to prepare for a marathon can morph into 10 social posts or even 10 short-form videos on TikTok, Reels, and the like.

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Email Marketing

Email marketing is direct communication with customers or prospects. Marketing via email encourages recipients to visit a site for information, purchases, or special deals.

Email performance is easily tracked with open rates, click-through rates, and conversions, providing valuable insights into customer behavior and preferences.

Email marketing drives website traffic and fosters loyalty, making it indispensable for digital marketing.

29. Ask for subscribers

“If you want to get subscribers to your email [list], you’ll need to work hard at it. Include a subscription form on every page of your website. Promote signups through free whitepapers, ebooks, or other products,” wrote Dr. Ralph Wilson, the founder of Web Marketing Today and the original author of this checklist.

Always use a double opt-in signup wherein subscribers first initiate the action on your site and then confirm it via a subsequent email. Double opt-ins reduce spam and help with deliverability.

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30. Develop a welcome series

An email welcome series contains at least three messages triggered when someone subscribes to your list. The first message should deploy moments after the subscriber completes the double opt-in registration, confirming her status and what to expect.

About two days later, send another message encouraging her to engage with your business. It could be an invitation to connect on social media, discover content on your blog, or shop on your site. Finally, send a special offer if the new subscriber does not purchase in the first week, perhaps offering free shipping or a discount.

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31. Create a post-purchase series

There are several potential email messages to send a customer after a purchase. The goal is to communicate about the order, encourage feedback, and earn additional orders. These messages typically include:

• An order confirmation thanking the customer and listing the purchased items. This message should include links to customer service personnel and methods to contact your business.
• A shipping notice when the order leaves your warehouse. Remember the tracking information.
• A delivery confirmation with an invitation to a Net Promoter survey.
• A few days after delivery, send an email requesting a product review and social media post.
• A week later, send a personalized product recommendation, inviting the customer back.

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32. Be a good sender

In 2024, Google and Yahoo enacted new email-sending policies to reduce the volume of unwanted email messages.

“We firmly believe that users worldwide deserve a more secure email environment, with fewer unwanted messages for an improved overall experience,” said Neil Kumaran, a Gmail group product manager, in a published statement.

To meet these policy requirements, marketers should:

• Authenticate email messages using the Sender Policy Framework (SPF), DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM), and Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting, and Conformance (DMARC) protocols.

• Make it easy to unsubscribe. Senders who deploy 5,000 emails in one day to Gmail or Yahoo Mail must offer a one-click unsubscribe link.

• Send emails folks want. Email senders must keep spam rates reported in Google Postmaster Tools below 0.3%.

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33. Segment recipients

Not everyone on your list is the same. Segmenting your email list may seem obvious, but many businesses still err by sending the same message to every subscriber. Contributor Andrew Aversa revealed his secrets of email segmentation, such as focusing on top customers, lapsed customers, and customers’ preferences.

Email segmentation is not new. What is new is the amount of available data.

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34. Use BIMI

Brand Indicators for Message Identification is an email specification that allows businesses to display a logo in line with an email message’s subject or sending address in the inbox of clients such as Gmail, Apple Mail, Yahoo Mail, and more.

A July 2021 report from Entrust (a payment security provider) and Red Shift (a data connectivity firm) stated that adding BIMI could boost email open rates by 21%; increase brand recall by 18%; and raise average purchase likelihood by an incredible 34%. Even a 3% increase would prompt most marketers to set up BIMI immediately.

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Advertising

Advertisements connect businesses with potential customers. Facebook, for example, does its best to connect advertisers’ products or services with interested users.

Advertising is often measured in return on advertising spend.

35. Buy search engine ads

Advertising on Google and other search engines is one of the easiest ways to promote a website. Pay-per-click or pay-per-impression ads are available via Google’s self-service platform, can be set up in moments, and are relatively easy to optimize.

Search ads can drive ecommerce sales, encourage newsletter subscriptions, and promote content. They are the Swiss Army knife of modern advertising. Google’s Smart Shopping campaigns simplify advertising for small and mid-sized businesses. Finally, you can run many campaigns with search ads, so it is a good idea to have a plan for organizing them.

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36. Advertise on social platforms

Facebook, Instagram, X, TikTok, and Snapchat all offer quick, customizable advertising campaign setups that can boost website traffic. Social media ads are more than visibility. They’re conversion machines for generating sales, driving traffic, or increasing signups — a marketer’s secret weapon.

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37. Leverage retargeting ads

Retargeting ads operate like digital boomerangs, gently reminding visitors who didn’t purchase to return for further shopping.

These ads rely on the familiarity principle, capitalizing on the previous interest to nudge potential customers closer to conversion. Google, Facebook, and many more search and social channels offer retargeting. Retargeting ads are quick to launch and typically include granular control over whom you target and how. The Loves Data channel on YouTube contains a helpful tutorial (below) on setting up retargeting ads.

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38. Invest in podcast sponsorships

Podcast hosts have a strong influence on their listeners. Folks hear or see a podcaster and develop trust with that person. This connection makes podcasts an opportunity for ecommerce brands. Podcast advertising can drive top-of-the-funnel awareness. AG1 (formerly Athletic Greens) is an example advertiser, a direct-to-consumer merchant promoting its product on dozens of podcasts.

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39. Advertise in email newsletters

Third-party tracking cookies will soon disappear. That might be good for privacy advocates, but many advertisers will have less visibility into performance and attribution. Email newsletters are, in a sense, cookie-proof. Advertisers have two options. First, they can insert newsletter ads programmatically, targeting individual subscribers similar to search and social media ads. LiveIntent and Paved are examples of programmatic ad providers.

Second, advertisers can target email subscribers contextually. The ads often include a direct endorsement from the newsletter creator.

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40. Advertise on YouTube

YouTube ads can connect your business with a massive audience of potential customers. The video format is powerful for communicating the value of products and services. Create a YouTube channel for your video ads. Define campaigns that make sense for YouTube, create your video ad, define your target audience using YouTube’s extensive demographics, and run your campaign.

Then monitor the campaign and optimize it for conversions.

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41. Create an affiliate marketing program

Affiliate marketing connects businesses with independent marketers willing to invest time and money to sell the company’s products. As with other forms of performance advertising, companies pay when affiliates deliver a specified customer action — typically a purchase. This pay-for-what-you-get approach makes affiliate marketing cost-effective.

Setting up an affiliate program takes some work but can be very effective. Affiliate marketing networks (ShareASale, CJ Affiliate, many more) can help. However, you must still define campaigns, set the payment (commission) per action, monitor how affiliates promote your business, measure campaign effectiveness, and optimize conversions, sales, and profits.

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42. Promote via shared direct mail

Valpack is a leading U.S. shared mail provider. Each month, it sends an envelope full of coupons to millions of qualified homes. Frequent shared mail advertisers include Best Buy, Target, Old Navy, Macy’s, Lowe’s, and Sam’s Club.

Create a coupon code for your direct-mail flyer. Then, measure the number of coupon codes redeemed. Update the coupon, and test again next month. Broad offers tend to work better than narrow ones. Some brick-and-click retailers have reportedly earned more than $20 in sales for every $1 invested in shared mail promotions.

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This Checklist’s Lineage

Internet marketing pioneer Dr. Ralph F. Wilson wrote the original Web Marketing Checklist for Web Marketing Today, his popular online magazine published from 1995 to 2016.

Wilson sought to help businesses succeed online. Many companies benefited from his work. In 2012, Practical Ecommerce acquired Web Marketing Today and in 2016 merged its content into this site.