Ecommerce Marketing | Google Marketing

New Innovations Remove Friction From Discovering Products In-Store And Online

12 June 2018 by

Driven by rapid changes in technology and mobile, consumer expectations continue to rise at an unrelenting pace. There are brand new ways for people to find and engage with businesses, and it’s becoming critical for marketers to remove friction at every step of the consumer journey. This morning at Search Marketing Expo Advanced, we made three announcements for marketers and retailers including:

1. New innovations to highlight your physical locations

Almost 80% of shoppers will go in-store when they have an item they want immediately.1 To help capture this demand, we’re expanding affiliate location extensions to video campaigns on YouTube– on top of Search and Display campaigns. This helps brand manufacturers drive and measure foot traffic to nearby retail stores and auto dealers that sell their products. We’ve seen that adding affiliate location extensions to TrueView in-stream and bumper ads can increase the clickthrough rate by over 15%.2

New local catalog ads on Display will also roll out to all advertisers by the end of the month to help shoppers discover what you sell, then visit your store. One-third of shoppers say finding inspiration is something they enjoy most about shopping.3 This interactive experience highlights a hero image and your inventory in an easy-to-scroll, mobile layout that helps shoppers explore your products. It also features in-store availability and detailed pricing information. This new format can complement your traditional print campaigns – including catalogs, flyers, and circulars – with the added audience and measurement benefits of digital ads.

Boulanger is one of the largest electronics and appliances retailers in France. The retail brand had a special promotional event for Spring 2018, so it turned to local catalog ads to boost its sales. Boulanger showcased a cheerful lifestyle image, a message welcoming the season and products carefully curated for local in-store promotion. With help from both click-based and impression-based store visits* (launched in March), the campaign drove over 20K visits to its stores, delivering a return of 42 times its investment on ad spend.

*Store visits are estimates based on aggregated, anonymized data from a sample set of users who have turned on Location History.

Onboarding to both local catalog ads and local inventory ads is now much easier for retailers of all sizes with the new local feed partnership program. The new program allows point-of-sale or inventory data providers, like Cayan, Pointy, Linx, and receipts, to provide sales and inventory data to Google on behalf of merchants, so they don’t have to create their own local product feeds. As an additional benefit, retailers can showcase their local inventory for free on the “See What’s In Store” feature on the search knowledge panel.

2. Competitive pricing insights to help deliver better sales results

Beyond availability of products in store, we know that price is also a top consideration for consumers. New price benchmarks in AdWords reporting will be available soon to show Shopping advertisers how other retailers are pricing the same products. You can use these pricing insights to inform your bidding strategy when you have price-competitive products to promote, to influence pricing strategy with your merchandising teams, or to troubleshoot performance drops due to competitors’ pricing.

For example, let’s say you find that you’re selling a sweater for $40 while most retailers are selling the same sweater for $60. You may choose to bid upon this sweater because your product is more price-competitive in the current market and will appeal to more potential customers.

3. Updates for our Shopping Actions program

Consumers continue to be open to new ways of discovering and buying products. Today at SMX Advanced, we shared an update on Shopping Actions, the program we launched in March to give consumers an easy way to complete the purchase from retailers, while on Google platforms like Search, the Assistant, or by voice.

Since its launch, thousands of retailers have requested to join through our interest form, and more than 70 retailers are live on the program today. Early testing indicates that participating retailers on average see an increase in total clicks and conversions at a lower overall cost per click and conversion, compared to running Shopping ads alone.4

As always, SMX Advanced is an exciting event that brings leading marketers together. We hope you’ll join us in our Learn with Google Classroom to connect and hear more about how these new products can help you grow your business.

Source: Official Google Webmasters Blog

Ecommerce Marketing | Google Marketing

Faster, Safer And Better Ad Experiences For Consumers

17 May 2018 by

Consumers have high expectations for faster, safer, and better digital experiences. This means it’s more important than ever for brands to deliver on these expectations.

At Google, we’re building new innovations to help AdWords advertisers design the best web experiences for your customers.

Speed: Improvements to click measurement

Speed matters. In fact, a one-second delay in mobile page load can decrease conversions up to 20%.1 That’s why we announced support for Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) as landing pages in AdWords and developed new tools like the Mobile Speed Scorecard and the Impact Calculator. With just a few inputs, this tool estimates the revenue impact that can result from improving the speed of your mobile website.

Another way we’re improving mobile site speed is parallel tracking (blog | help center) — which was introduced earlier this year for advertisers using click measurement systems. How does this improve speed? After an ad click, web browsers will process click measurement requests in the background, helping people reach your site up to several seconds faster.2 This creates better user experiences, leading to more conversions and less budget spent on bounced clicks.

Starting October 30, 2018, parallel tracking will be required for all AdWords accounts. To get a jump start, you can now opt in your Search Network and Shopping campaigns. And even if you don’t intend to turn it on today, you should start talking with your click measurement providers to ensure that they are ready for this change. Doing so, ensures there’s no disruption to your click measurement system.

If you’ve confirmed that your click measurement system is already compatible, you can opt in from your account-level “Settings” page in the “Tracking” section. Learn more

Security: Focus on HTTPS

You want your customers to have a safe and secure experience, every time they engage with your website. But too many brands still use unencrypted HTTP to send users to their landing pages. That’s why Google strongly advocates that sites adopt HTTPS encryption, the industry standard for ensuring the security and integrity of data traveling between the browser and the website.

Over the last year, Chrome has marked an increasingly large set of HTTP pages as “not secure.” Beginning in July 2018 with the release of Chrome 68, Chrome will mark all HTTP pages as “not secure.”

To make sure your users continue to have the best possible landing page experience, we’ve taken a few extra steps:

  • Enabled HTTP Search ad clicks to automatically be redirected to HTTPS when we know that your site prefers HTTPS, which we will begin rolling out the week of June 11.
  • Launched Ad version history to allow advertisers to update your landing page URLs from HTTP to HTTPS without resetting all of your performance statistics. 
  • Will start to warn advertisers in AdWords when you’re using less secure HTTP addresses for landing pages, in the next few weeks.

We hope that these innovations will help people browse more quickly, confidently, and securely.

Source: Official Google Webmasters Blog

Google Marketing

Supporting Election Integrity Through Greater Advertising Transparency

4 May 2018 by

Last year, Google committed to make political advertising more transparent. This week, we’re rolling out new policies for U.S. election ads across our platforms as we work to meet those commitments.

As a first step, we’ll now require additional verification for anyone who wants to purchase an election ad on Google in the U.S. and require that advertisers confirm they are a U.S. citizen or lawful permanent resident, as required by law. That means advertisers will have to provide a government-issued ID and other key information. To help people better understand who is paying for an election ad, we’re also requiring that ads incorporate a clear disclosure of who is paying for it.  

There’s more to come. This summer, we’ll also release a new Transparency Report specifically focused on election ads. This Report will describe who ​is ​buying ​election-related ​ads ​on ​our ​platforms ​and ​how ​much ​money ​is being spent. We’re also building a searchable library for election ads, where anyone can find election ads purchased on Google and who paid for them.

As we learn from these changes and our continued engagement with leaders and experts in the field, we’ll work to improve transparency of political issue ads and expand our coverage to a wider range of elections.

Our work on elections goes far beyond improving policies for advertising. We’re investing heavily in keeping our own platforms secure and working with campaigns, elections officials, journalists, and others to help ensure the security of the online platforms that they depend on. In addition to the industry-leading protections in our consumer products, we’ve developed a range of Protect Your Election tools with Alphabet’s Jigsaw that are specifically tailored for people who are at particularly high risk of online attacks.

Yesterday, we announced improvements to one such product. Google’s Advanced Protection Program, our strongest level of account security for those who face increased risk of sophisticated phishing attacks sent to their email address, now supports Apple’s native applications on iOS devices, including Apple Mail, Calendar and Contacts. We expect this will help more campaigns and officials who are often the targets of sophisticated phishing attacks.

We are also working across the industry and beyond to strengthen protections around elections. We’ve partnered with the National Cyber Security Alliance and Digital Democracy Project at the Belfer Center at Harvard Kennedy School to fund security training programs for elected officials, campaigns, and staff members. We are also supporting the “Disinfo Lab” at the Kennedy School’s Shorenstein Center, which will employ journalists to leverage computational tools to monitor misinformation in the run-up to and during elections.

For over a decade we’ve built products that provide information about elections around the world, to help voters make decisions on the leadership of their communities, their cities, their states, and their countries. We are continuing that work through our efforts to increase election advertising transparency, improve online security for campaigns and candidates, and help combat misinformation.  Stay tuned for more announcements in the coming months.

Source: Official Google Webmasters Blog

Best Life Hacks | Blog Marketing | Reputation Marketing | Web Marketing

Best Probiotic Pills On Earth

3 May 2018 by
Best Probiotic Pills

As an entrepreneur, I work long hours and my energy is constantly being tapped out. Running out of energy is no fun.

Hence, finding ways to “BIOHACK” is a big key to success.

Biohacking essentially means carefully choosing everything that you put into your body with the awareness that it will either help or hurt my energy levels.

Since I am constantly stuffing my face with gummy bears, twinkies and bon bons, I really need a good probiotic.

I’m kidding, I eat pretty healthy, but honestly I am one of the lucky ones who can eat whatever they want and stay the same weight. Thanks Mom and Dad!

Regardless of your diet, a good probiotic is key.

It is estimated that there are 100 trillion micro-organisms from approximately 500 different species living in our stomachs. These micro-organisms contribute to approximately 70 percent of the body’s immune response. Most of them help us to digest food and keep our immune system in check.

Man-made chemicals from our modern day diets can sometimes prevent our digestive tracts from working like a well-oiled machine.

Cue the probiotics treatments.

Studies have been showing for decades that probiotics can treat and prevent gastrointestinal problems when that happens. That’s why I love them, and I finally found the one that works for me.

Studies on Probiotics

One study indicated that probiotics helped 60 percent of participants with antibiotic-associated diarrhea. Probiotics help with constipation as well and have been shown to slow the transit time of food by 12.4 hours. In these studies, probiotics increased the number of weekly bowel movements by 1.3 bowel movements, allowing patients to feel better about their digestion within hours. 

This is just the start of the magic of probiotics. There are a ton of benefits to them, and I’ve been using them for years. There’s one I want to tell you about. It’s called Restore3. You hardly even know you are taking it, but you definitely feel better and healthier overall when you do. 

In Native Formulas, I trust…

I take these Restore 3 supplements every day, and they have a noticeable affect on my vitality and energy.

The founder of Restore 3 have vast experience in the area of digestive health. They have done some really amazing research on gut health. The story of how they created these supplements came from decades of trial and error, searching for solutions to digestive tract issues. Check out their website, they have a ton of great info on there related to gut health.

What are the benefits of taking probiotics?

There are a number of benefits of taking probiotics. They are most known for helping with digestion, and any problems you may have with your gut. They are very popular with certain intestinal disorders, but they also help with almost any acute or mild digestion problem. Probiotics provide many benefits to the following conditions, just to start:

• Diarrhea
• Constipation
• Irritable bowel syndrome
• Crohn’s disease
• Colitis
• H. pylori
• Urinary tract infections 
• Digestive infections

Healthy digestion is the primary benefit of probiotics. They also help to relieve gas and bloating, or any kind of digestive discomfort at all. 

How do I choose a probiotic?

When you are looking at different probiotics to choose from, it is going to be overwhelming because it feels like they all look the same. There are certain natural chemicals that are sometimes added to probiotics, and this is often where you will find the differences with most brands. Read the labels carefully.

To start, you want a product that contains Lactobacillus, in a quantity of at least 1 billion units. You are also going to want to look for Saccharomyces boulardii, Bifidobacterium. Most probiotics on the market contain at least Lactobaccillus. If you only get one of these chemicals in your probiotic, be sure that it is that one. Yogurt contains Lactobacillus for example. On their own, these chemicals will often be eliminated by your stomach acid and won’t produce the benefits you are looking for from a probiotic. This is why so many people supplement with probiotics.

Other ingredients to look for include natural herbal additions, which you will see often in probiotics. Herbal supplements can help to relieve abdominal discomfort considerably.

The ingredients used in Restore 3 include:

Proteolytic Enzymes
Magnesium Malate
Cellulase And Hemicellulase
Glucoamylase And Amylase
Lipase
Bacillus Coagulans
Bacillus Subtilis

Restore 3 is a powerful dietary supplement, which delivers essential nutrients, enzymes and probiotics in your body. It is made using high potency ingredients, which are safe and highly effective. Using this formula will improve your body health and make you feel strong. It improves digestive health, relief you from pains, boost body immunity and raise energy levels.

It is very essential for people suffering from fibromyalgia, as it reliefs from pain and make you feel refreshed.

It also eliminates other health issues like gas, bloating and heartburn. This formula is designed for daily use for you to obtain optimum results.

The Restore 3 probiotic delivers the most essential bacteria strains in your intestines, leading to an improved digestive health.

You won’t have to buy multiple products to get them all included in your diet.

Are Probiotics Safe?

Yes, for most people probiotics are safe because they contain things that our body already has. For some people, there might be some allergic reactions. Those allergic reactions may include the very symptoms you are trying to alleviate, like bloating, diarrhea, stomach upset, and gas. If you are concerned at all, talk to your doctor about taking probiotics.

There are some conditions that should avoid probiotics. Those conditions include the following:

• Weakened immune systems
• Critical or terminal illnesses
• Post-surgical patients
• Infants that are ill

Probiotics are considered to be safe for children, but sometimes that is a no. When they are already ill, or being treated for something, they should be avoided until the doctor gives the green light.

Why Restore 3?

Restore 3 offers all of the ingredients that you need in a good probiotic.

Along with all of the immune-boosting properties that you get from your own intestinal micro-organisms, Restore 3 features the proprietary DE111 that enhances immune response above what other probiotics can do for you.

The support team is very responsive too if you have questions. My questions were answered the same day.

Bottom line

I am always looking for ways to keep my body running at maximum efficiency. The “master key” to vibrant health IS IN YOUR GUT! Your gut is the gatekeeper to so many microorganisms and your gut is the one that unlocks so many doors which need to be opened to reach optimal health.

My advice is not to spend a lot of money getting supplements to cross every mineral off of your list. Restore 3 is one is all-in-one solution, meaning you can get everything you need from one dosage.

Try Restore3 today at a very affordable cost, and I have a gut feeling that you’ll be glad you did! 😉

Ecommerce Marketing | Google Marketing | Youtube Marketing

A New Video Format To Reach People Across The Mobile Web And Apps

17 April 2018 by

Over the last year, we’ve been working on a way to extend the reach of your video campaigns to people beyond YouTube, especially as they spend more and more time interacting with apps and sites on their mobile devices. Starting today, you can use out-stream video ads, a new format built exclusively for mobile environments, to reach more potential customers with your video creativity.

Outstream ads drive incremental, cost-efficient and viewable reach beyond YouTube. Ads show on Google video partners, which are high-quality publisher websites and mobile apps where you can show video ads, including TrueView in-stream and Bumper ads. When outstream video ads come into view on a mobile screen, they begin to play with sound off. After that, a user can tap the ad to turn sound on and restart the video from the beginning, or simply keep scrolling.

In every context, an ad needs the opportunity to be seen in order to drive impact, which is why our outstream video ads are charged on viewable CPM. This means that every impression you pay for has been on screen and viewable (as measured by MRC standards). In addition to Active View and unique reach reporting, you can use brand interest lift to measure incremental interest in your brand or product as assessed by an increase in organic searches on Google.com or YouTube.

Outstream video ads complement our efficient reach solutions for YouTube: TrueView for reach and Bumper ads. Now, you can reach even more of your audience across the mobile web and apps with a video ad designed for the ways people read, play, swipe, and scroll on mobile.

Advertisers like Hong Kong Tourism board are already using out-stream video ads to increase awareness and cost-efficient reach. Tina Chao, General Manager, Marketing, says, “To build awareness for Hong Kong as a travel destination, the Hong Kong Tourism Board used out-stream video ads to reach a broad set of potential travelers across Asia. Outstream video ads delivered strong results for our global brand campaign: 30% incremental reach with a 40% lower cost per completed video view and 85% lower CPM.”

Source: Official Google Webmasters Blog

Google Marketing

Helping Publishers Recover Lost Revenue From Ad Blocking

16 April 2018 by

Today, the majority of the internet is supported by digital advertising. But bad ad experiences—the ones that blare music unexpectedly, or force you to wait 10 seconds before you get to the page—are hurting publishers who make the content, apps, and services we use every day. When people encounter annoying ads, and then decide to block all ads, it cuts off revenue for the sites you actually find useful. Many of these people don’t intend to defund the sites they love when they install an ad blocker, but when they do, they block all ads on every site they visit.  

Last year we announced Funding Choices to help publishers with good ad experiences recover lost revenue due to ad blocking. While Funding Choices is still in beta, millions of ad blocking users every month are now choosing to see ads on publisher websites, or “whitelisting” that site, after seeing a Funding Choices message. In fact, in the last month over 4.5 million visitors who were asked to allow ads said yes, creating over 90 million additional paying page views for those sites.

Over the coming weeks, we’re expanding Funding Choices to 31 additional countries, giving publishers the ability to ask visitors from those countries to choose between allowing ads on a site, or purchasing an ad removal pass through Google Contributor. Also, we’ve started a test that allows publishers to use their own proprietary subscription services within Funding Choices.

How Funding Choices works

Funding Choice gives publishers a way to have a conversation with their site visitors through custom messages they can use to express how ad blocking impacts their business and content. When a visitor arrives at a site using an ad blocker, Funding Choices allows the site to display one of three message types to that user:

A dismissible message that doesn’t restrict access to content:

A dismissible message that counts and limits the number of page views that person is allowed per month, as determined by the site owner before the content is blocked.

Or, a message that blocks access to content until the visitor chooses to allow ads on the site, or to pay to access the content with either the site’s proprietary subscription service or a pass that removes all ads on that site through Google Contributor.

On average, publishers using Funding Choices are seeing 16 percent of visitors allow ads on their sites with some seeing rates as high as 37 percent.

Ad blockers designed to remove all ads from all sites are making it difficult for publishers with good ad experiences to maintain sustainable businesses. Our goal for Funding Choices is to help publishers get paid for their work by reducing the impact of ad blocking on them, and we look forward to continuing to expand the product availability.

Source: Official Google Webmasters Blog

SEO Marketing | Social Media Marketing | Web Marketing

Is SEO the New PR?

31 March 2018 by
Is SEO the New PR?
Google PR marketing

Way back before the internet had even been invented, companies hired PR firms to get their name out, build a brand name reputation, and help prospective customers learn about them. Public relations professionals would dutifully go about writing press releases, scoring feature stories, and negotiating product presentation opportunities in the name of finding more buyers.

Then the internet came along and everything changed. Press releases lost their power to serve as a news source because newspapers and magazines were folding. Feature stories weren’t read because they didn’t stand out in the sea of information. Product placement decreased in value because there were so many new ways of viewing content.

Fortunately, there is still a way of getting your name in front of prospects when they look for the product or service you offer. It’s called Search Engine Optimization, or SEO. This is a way of formulating your website, blogs, and social media content to be responsive to online search queries. If someone uses Google to search for “hotels in Santa Barbara,” or “restaurants in Santa Ynez Valley,” you want your website to pop up on the first page of their results.

How to Blend SEO Into Your PR Efforts

Here are tips you can use to incorporate more SEO, increase your visibility in search engine results, and help the internet drum up more business for your business:

search marketing company 2
  • Make your website accessible: Search engines and potential customers need to be able to easily access your website. In addition to great content, you also want to get the technical parts right. You don’t want someone clicking to your website because you are the answer to their problem, only to get a “website not found” error. Check all pages for functionality, eliminate duplicate content, include title and H2 tags, and have a rich source of content.
  • Think about keywords: What do prospects search for when they need your product or service? Develop a list of words they might type into the search engine bar. If those words aren’t prominently included in your website copy, your site will not appear in their results. The content needs to be informative and natural; you can’t just add a list of keywords to the bottom of the page and hope it generates results. If there is a lot of competition in your field, incorporate plenty of terms which make your business stand out from the crowd.
  • Be a valuable resource: Look at your website as a potential customer might and ask yourself, “Does this help me?” You brought in somebody who searched for a particular term, so that had better appear right on your landing page. If you can’t see any benefits, then you’ve got some rewrites to do. Have content that is educational, helpful and easy to understand, and make sure it is current. There is nothing worse than navigating to a site that is chock full of old info. This effort helps prospects learn about you, and also signals the search engine algorithms that your site has something valuable to offer their users.
  • Provide a great website experience: Have a compelling website experience for your visitors. Most leave in seconds if they don’t think you can help, so have your prime selling proposition front and center. Make a clear learning path, avoid large blocks of content, and include helpful headlines that communicate key selling points. Include lots of pictures, graphics, and videos to quickly provide information. And make it easy to contact or buy from you.
  • Get social: Once your website strategy is in place, start bulking up your online presence through a concerted social media strategy. Have a Facebook page and Twitter account that offer useful information and drive visitors to your site. Provide the same branding experience across all outlets. This also increases the likelihood that the search engines will aggregate and incorporate additional contact opportunities for your company. Search results that include a website, Facebook page and LinkedIn page for a single company demonstrate a great deal of online flexibility. Use social media to encourage interaction and you’ll also boost search-ability.
  • Build more links: Search engines love it when other sites link to yours because this reflects your online credibility, but they can’t be random or low-quality links. Ask your current customers and contacts to link to your site if it makes sense for their business. You can provide reviews and referrals for complementary companies, and they can do the same for you. Bring in guest bloggers who will certainly link to your site from their blog, and you may even get organic links just because you have such helpful information in your blog. Make it easy for them by providing sample emails, tweets, or Facebook posts they can use to let others know more about you. You can also search for informative articles online and post comments on them that will introduce a new set of readers to your company.
  • Review sites: There are a number of online review sites that can help prospects find your business. You need to think in terms of Yelp, TripAdvisor, Open Table, Angie’s List, and other sites people go to gather insights. Initially, you just want to make sure they have the correct basic information such as address and phone number, but then you can ask your happiest clients to start posting reviews. If you’re in a more technical field, make sure your product specifications are included in industry sites.

If you’ve got a real news story, keep in mind that you can still generate PR with media outlets; it’s just moved online, too. If you’ve got a targeted customer base, check out your local media websites and look at ways you can provide news. They might have blogs or event calendars, or you might be able to email an editor or news director with a storyline about your business. SEO really can be the new PR for your company – you just need to know how to use it.

Ecommerce Marketing | Google Marketing

Protecting Our Ad Network: How Advertising Policies & Policy Enforcement Work

27 March 2018 by

On March 14, we shared information about our work to remove bad ads and bad sites from our ad networks. With a combination of people, policies, and technology we took down more than 3.2 billion ads in 2017, up from 700 million in 2015. That’s more than 100 bad ads per second. Today, we want to share more details about how our policies and policy enforcement work to help protect our network.

Policies
We continuously monitor ads and content for policy compliance.

  • If you’re an advertiser, our AdWords policies determine which ads are acceptable and what types of products or services can be promoted with Google ads. For example, we prohibit technologies that attempt to deceive users or abuse our network, like auto-redirecting ads, malware-laden sites, or “trick-to-click” ads. 
  • If you’re a publisher, our AdSense program policies outline the kinds of websites and content we allow to show Google ads. For example, our dangerous and derogatory content policy prohibits publishers from running Google ads on content that promotes discrimination against marginalized groups. 

We constantly review and update our policies to protect consumers, advertisers and publishers. In fact, in 2017, we added 28 new advertiser and 20 new publisher policies.

Technology & Talent

To enforce these policies, we use a combination of people and technology. Google’s technology is designed to detect when ads or content violate our policies and disable them quickly. We employ automated filters that continuously identify policy issues, clean, and defend our ad systems. And we consider user feedback when people report sites and ads that they believe may be in violation of our policies.

Technology helps us spot potential violations, but our talented reviewers and interdisciplinary team also work to enforce policies. When we review advertisers’ ads, we review everything from the ad creative to the landing page. For publishers, we evaluate elements including traffic patterns on the site and whether the content is appropriate to be monetized. Our teams are constantly reviewing because a publisher or an advertiser who is compliant with our policies today may not be tomorrow. 

Controls
In addition to evaluating ads and sites for policy compliance, we provide advertisers controls they need to manage where and when their ads appear, and provide publishers the ability to control the type and format of ads appearing next to their content. For example, an advertiser of an extreme sporting event may use a Digital Content Label, the film-rating style control for maturity level, to place their ads alongside content suitable specific audiences. Advertisers can couple these controls with placement exclusions, which allow advertisers to specify publishers, apps, or videos to avoid in their campaigns.

Protecting our network

Maintaining the health of our ad network is key to supporting the ecosystem of creators, publishers, and advertisers that rely on Google ads to build their businesses. That’s why our teams are committed to refining our policies and fine-tuning our systems and controls to make sure Google ads work for everyone.

Source: Official Google Webmasters Blog

Google Marketing

An Advertising Ecosystem That Works For Everyone

14 March 2018 by

Digital advertising plays an important role in making the web what it is today—a forum where anyone with a good idea and good content can reach an audience and potentially make a living. In order for this ads-supported, free web to work, it needs to be a safe and effective place to learn, create and advertise. Unfortunately, this isn’t always the case. Whether it’s a one-off accident or a coordinated action by scammers trying to make money, a negative experience hurts the entire ecosystem. That’s why for the last 15 years, we’ve invested in technology, policies, and talent to help us fight issues like ad fraud, malware, and content scammers. Last year, we were able to remove more bad actors from our ad ecosystem than ever before, and at a faster rate.

We removed 100 bad ads per second

In 2017, we took down more than 3.2 billion ads that violated our advertising policies. That’s more than 100 bad ads per second! This means we’re able to block the majority of bad ad experiences, like malvertising and phishing scams, before the scams impact people. We blocked 79 million ads in our network for attempting to send people to malware-laden sites, and removed 400,000 of these unsafe sites last year. And, we removed 66 million “trick-to-click” ads as well as 48 million ads that were attempting to get users to install unwanted software.

New technology to better protect advertisers

Last year, we removed 320,000 publishers from our ad network for violating our publisher policies, and blacklisted nearly 90,000 websites and 700,000 mobile apps. We also introduced technology that allows us to better protect our advertisers by removing Google ads from individual pages on a website that violate our policies. Last year, we removed 2 million pages for policy violations each month. This has been critical in scaling enforcement for policies that prohibit monetization of inappropriate and controversial content. In fact, after expanding our policy against dangerous and derogatory content in April 2017 to cover additional forms of discrimination and intolerance, we removed Google ads from 8,700 pages that violated the expanded policy.

Fighting deceptive content online

Many website owners use our advertising platforms, like AdSense, to run Google ads on their sites and content and make money. We paid $12.6 billion to publishing partners in our ad network last year. But in order to make money from Google ads, you have to play by rules— that means respecting the user experience more than the ads.

Our publisher policies exist to help us maintain that balance, even as trends change online. For example, in recent years, we’ve seen the rise of scammers trying to take advantage of the growing popularity of online news to make money. We prohibit websites in our ad network from serving ads on misrepresentative content. Essentially this means that you can’t serve ads if you’re pretending to be a legitimate news website based in London when you’re actually a content scammer in a different city. In 2017, we found that a small number of publishers were responsible for the majority of these violations. Of the 11,000 websites we reviewed for potentially violating the misrepresentative content policy, we blocked over 650 of those sites and terminated 90 publishers from our network.  

More frequently, we see violations of our scraping content policy. This type of policy violation occurs when bad actors try to make money as quickly as possible by copying news or content from other sites. In 2017, we blocked over 12,000 websites for “scraping,” duplicating and copying content from other sites, up from 10,000 in 2016.

Does an ad with the headline “Ellen DeGeneres adopts a baby elephant!” make you want to click on it? You’re not alone. In recent years, scammers have tried to sell diet pills and weight-loss scams by buying ads that look like sensational news headlines but ultimately lead to a website selling something other than news. We suspended more than 7,000 AdWords accounts for tabloid cloaking violations, up from 1,400 in 2016.

New policies to tackle emerging threats

We’re constantly updating our policies as we see new threats emerge. Last year, we added 28 new advertiser policies and 20 new publisher policies to combat new threats and improve the ads experience online. This year, we updated several policies to address ads in unregulated or speculative financial products like binary options, cryptocurrency, foreign exchange markets, and contracts for difference (or CFDs). We also updated our gambling ads policies to address new methods of gambling with items that have real-world value (e.g., skins gambling). And we will introduce a new certification process for rehabilitation facilities, allowing legitimate addiction treatment centers to connect with people in need. Our work to protect the ads ecosystem doesn’t stop here—it’s ongoing. As consumer trends evolve, as our methods to protect the open web get better, so do online scams. Improving the ads experience across the web, whether that’s removing harmful ads or intrusive ads, will continue to be a top priority for us.

Source: Official Google Webmasters Blog

Social Media Marketing | Web Marketing

Top 10 Restaurant Marketing Ideas for 2019

2 March 2018 by
Top 10 Restaurant Marketing Ideas for 2019

Innovative marketing is essential to the success of any restaurant. Whether you’re launching a new eatery or have been running a successful bistro for years, you should never overlook fresh advertising concepts. So, check out these top 10 restaurant marketing ideas to get diners talking about your business and bring customers through the door.

1) Produce a professional website

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Your restaurant website is the most important online marketing tool you have, so make sure it’s functional, attractive and professional. One of the best ways to do this is by selecting a top pre-made restaurant theme that you can customize to suit your business. Look for a theme that has:

  • A simple drag-and-drop page builder function
  • The ability to add menus
  • Contact forms and table booking systems
  • Review/testimonial functions
  • Slider galleries to show personalized images of your food
  • Ability to add a blog
  • Mobile-friendly functionality

Make sure you use Search Engine Optimization (SEO) techniques throughout your site so that it ranks in search engine results. If you’re struggling to create your website, hire a professional to help.

2) Get reviews on Yelp

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Word-of-mouth has long been known as the most powerful marketing tool. Recent surveys show that word-of-mouth reviews influence purchasing decisions for 74% of consumers and 88% of people trust online reviews as much as recommendations from personal contacts. Yelp, which ranks businesses according to customer reviews, is one of the best tools for word-of-mouth marketing. So set up your Yelp business profile today and always remember to personally respond to customer reviews.

3) Interact with customers on social media

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You can’t ignore the power of social media in today’s internet-obsessed world where two billion people spend over an hour and a half every day on social networks. Plus, having a social media presence makes it easy for customers to find and connect with you. So, if you haven’t already, set up your profiles on key platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Pinterest and integrate them with your website. Next, take the time to really connect with your customers on social media; share relevant content and news with them, reply to comments and run special offers. Social media can also be a useful tool for gathering customer feedback, so don’t forget to ask your followers questions so you can improve your restaurant experience.

4) Localize your SEO

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Make sure your website ranks highly on Google when people search for restaurants in your local area. For example, if you run a Mexican restaurant in Santa Barbara, you want your website to show up when people type: top Mexican restaurants in Santa Barbara into Google.  Here are a few ways to do this:

  • Use the free Google Keyword tool to find out exactly which phrases people are searching for related to restaurants in your area, such as: where to eat in Santa Barbara, or best Santa Barbara restaurants. Include keyword findings on your website in title tags, H2 tags, meta descriptions, content and alt tags.
  • Make sure your business is listed on Google Places by signing up to Google My Business.
  • Add your business NAP (Name, Address, Phone Number) to every page of your website. Make sure this information is consistently listed and formatted across all social media platforms and review websites.

5) Create a blog

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Produce an engaging blog for your website to increase organic traffic, restaurant bookings and boost your search engine rankings. Make sure you update your blog consistently with original content including plenty of personalized images and videos. Use your blog to share restaurant news such as seasonal dishes, write about topical food subjects, and post recipes and ideas. Promote all of your articles on social media and ask food bloggers to guest post on your site. Make your blog easy to navigate and ensure readers can comment on posts and share your content with the click of a button.

6)  Engage with local food influencers

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Find out who the biggest local food bloggers, Youtubers and Instagrammers are in your area and invite them to dine at your restaurant for free. They’ll photograph, review and film the experience to share with their food-obsessed followers, which is marketing gold dust. Recent studies show that collaborating with social influencers has become one of the most powerful ways to reach customers and over 80% of companies who’ve already tried this strategy say it was successful. You can also partner with food influencers by rewarding them to mention your restaurant or one of your promotions on their channels.

7)  Grow your customer database

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Build up your email database by placing call-to-actions across your website asking people to sign up to your newsletter for special offers. Send out tailored deals to encourage bookings or share news about upcoming events. You can also email out your latest blog articles, top monthly dishes and advertise current contests. Run a special meal discount for all new customers in exchange for signing up to your newsletters. Remember not to spam your subscribers and only email them useful and engaging content. You can take this tactic a step further by collecting the phone numbers of local customers to send them offers via SMS.

8)  Run social media discounts and contests

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Reward your loyal customers and drum up extra business via your social media channels. Make eye-catching graphics to promote time-limited discounts and offers especially for your followers. Get creative with your deals and run social media contests and sweepstakes with prizes. This will create excitement around your brand and keep customers coming back to both your social media pages and your restaurant. Give your campaigns an extra boost by promoting them in a Facebook Ad for maximum exposure.

9)  Host events at your restaurant

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Draw a crowd by hosting exciting events and entertainment at your restaurant. Think live music every Thursday, monthly comedy nights, or speed dating evenings. Get involved during key holiday seasons by offering special menus for Thanksgiving and Christmas or sponsoring the local Halloween parade, for example. Publicize all your special events on your social media channels, website, and e-newsletters.

10)  Run Google Ads around the holidays

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Give your business an extra boost around key holiday periods by running time-limited Google Advertising campaigns. When you use Google Adwords you’re paying to have your restaurant show up on the first page of the search results, along with your address and contact information. Adwords allows you to send out geo-targeted ads to people in your local area and easily reach mobile customers. The great thing about Google Adwords is that you can easily control your campaign budget and analyze its results.

Which of these top restaurant marketing ideas will you try? Share your comments below.

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