William Exchange

It’s been a while since we did a case study, so we thought we would break our dry spell by doing a case study on ourselves! I’ll be honest, this was more of a test than it was a case study. If it failed, I might have tweeted about it, but if it succeeded I was going make a case study out of it, so here we are. We were also very excited after launching our Google My Business guide last month. Note: this case study is in fact a study, and not necessarily hard evidence. We hypothesized that our work resulted in a 68% increase in traffic based on insights, analytics, and our experience. The problem:  We wanted more traffic to our Google My Business Page! Doesn’t everyone? We’ve always gotten a lot of great traffic from Google, but not so much from GMB. Our intent was also slightly off. By using GMB insights, we found that our intent was off by a schmidge. We were ranking for some odd terms that I don’t want to repeat here because I don’t want to further confuse ...

The needs and habits of smartphone users haven’t changed much Mobile users are often looking for something they need now, be that a coffee shop, tow truck, or suntan lotion. Consumers searching on mobile are further down the conversion funnel. Ready to order the product online right then and there, or cost comparing on their phone while in a store. A massive 82% of mobile users conduct “near me” searches. If you’re counting on mobile users to scroll past ads on their phone to find your organic listing, you’re playing the long odds. And these odds may be getting even longer. When expanded text ads were introduced a few years ago it practically doubled the number of characters you could put in an ad. Include call or site extensions, and your ad can take up 4x its original screen real estate. If there is a Google rich snippet or local listing pack in your search results you might not even see a single organic result above the fold – even on a desktop.   When ...

At the Engage Conference put on by SEM PDX last week, MobileMoxie CEO Cindy Krum started off the morning by talking about the changes in the mobile SERP and her outlook on how to best optimize for mobile. With digital marketing trends and best practices always shifting, we want everyone to be aware of the key takeaways from Cindy’s presentation. SEO Strategy is Geared Toward Desktop Searches on mobile represent more than half of searches worldwide. Despite searchers’ heavy mobile use, SEO tools are still focused on desktop. This poses an issue because 31% of desktop search results are not visible in the mobile search engine results page (SERP). Cindy believes these tools are also looking at mobile the wrong way, as they don’t take into account the latest updates to the algorithm. Changes to the Mobile SERP Google has made significant changes to the mobile SERP, and widespread SEO best practices have yet to catch up. These changes include the move away from organ...

Everyone talks about video content for advertising, but they don’t always do it. Why is that? Could it be the misconceived notion that it’s always expensive because you need to purchase high-end equipment, hire videographers, or rent a studio? I think so. While those amenities would be great for any business to have, they are not realistic for most, especially small businesses. If that sounds like your scenario, worry not. You can create customized, high-quality video content for your Facebook advertising campaigns easily, affordably, and successfully with Facebook Slideshow Ads. Let me tell you how. In this guide, you’ll learn: What Facebook Slideshow Ads are and how they work How to set up Facebook Slideshow Ads for your business 4 tips to sell like crazy with your Facebook Slideshow ads What are Facebook Slideshow Ads? Slideshow ads are video-like ads that use a series of still images and effects that show motion, play sound, and display text to showcase...

When Google makes a change, there tends to be a period of panic and anger — and the recent changes to match types were no exception . The internet threw up its arms in justified frustration — account structures and workflows honed over the years just got hosed down by “close variants.” In my view, single keyword ad groups, or SKAGs, were the most affected. SKAGs thrive on high levels of control over keyword syntax, yielding perfect keyword to ad to landing page relevancy.  There is no “right” way to run an account, and there’s an argument to be made for every paid media perspective. However, when Google changes the rules of engagement, some strategies have to be retired. It’s time to say goodbye to SKAGs as we’ve known them, and embrace single theme ad groups, or STAGs. But before we say goodbye, it’s important to understand why the strategy was so successful for some and how to carry that value into the new “intent” era. What are SKAGs? Why did SKA...

Do a quick Google search for “multitasking” and you’ll find a wealth of articles and reports that pretty much arrive at the same conclusion: Trying to juggle too much at once will substantially undermine your productivity, so it’s best to tackle one task at a time. That’s all well and good. I can certainly testify from my own personal experience—as a content marketer here at WordStream—that multitasking is generally a bad idea. I am, however, one of the lucky ones: Because the day-to-day nature of my job makes it relatively easy for me to focus on one discrete project at a time, resisting the urge to multitask isn’t exactly strenuous. The same can’t be said for someone like Veronika Cervenakova, Performance Marketing Executive at digital signage solutions provider ScreenCloud. Tasked, like many fellow marketers at small and medium-sized businesses, with the management of several online advertising accounts, Veronika has an extraordinary amount of stuff on he...

As a long-term marketing strategy, SEO can help drive organic traffic and steadily boost your site’s ranking in the SERPs As an internet marketing technique, search engine optimization plays an important role in the growth of your online business. Not only does it help search engine robots to accurately index your web pages, but it also helps enhance user experience. Moreover, as a long-term marketing strategy, SEO can help drive organic traffic and steadily boost your site’s ranking in SERPs. Implementation of SEO, however, can be a challenge for newbie marketers. This is because SEO comprises of a wide range of on-page and off-page SEO factors. If you are unaware of what these are, you are bound to make silly SEO mistakes. This, in turn, can severely affect your site’s ranking as well as traffic and conversion. If you have noticed a sudden drop in your ranking and traffic, then one of the reasons for it could be one or more of these SEO mistakes. Let’s take a ...