3 Remarkable PPC Studies From 2018

In the PPC business, data makes the world go ‘round. Things can change in the blink of an eye, but the good news is that results can be measured easily through hard data. The problem is, that data is not always readily available. Many companies hoard the data from their PPC case studies or put it behind paywalls, and with good reason. The data on good PPC ads can give an important edge over the competition.

All that being said, however, you needn’t worry. Push Group an award winning London based PPC agency stays up to date on all the cutting edge research being done in the world of PPC ads.

They’ve tracked down three remarkable PPC studies that took place in 2018, all with interesting and important data from the latest in this field.

1. This case study on how to get a good quality score

This study focused on using the AdWords performance grader to find what the common characteristics were in a high quality score account. It found that these accounts had five shared characteristics: good click-through rates, high use of long-tail keywords, ad text optimization that was ongoing, a high amount of dedicated account activity, and perfectly following best practices.

This is important because it shows us what work realistically needs to go into getting a high quality score, which makes a big differences in PPC campaigns. Our agency is dedicated to staying up to date on these best practices. With a good quality score, a company’s cost per click can be greatly reduced, resulting in more benefit for less money.

2. This study done on the company Orangeries UK

Studies done on PPC campaigns for specific companies can tell us a lot. In this case, Orangeries UK was suffering from “no organic position, poor enquiry volumes, poor conversion rates, [and an] expensive adwords campaign.” The company that they approached to run their PPC campaign put several strategies into action that were ultimately successful in improving the PPC campaign and saving Orangeries UK money that they were able to put towards other areas.

To do this, the ad agency “designed a new, fast loading, responsive website”. In addition to that, they also put effort into integrating new keywords, as well as installing advanced tracking code.

With these and other techniques, they found they were able to improve traffic a whopping 2115% over less than a year, with 300 unique visitors a day. They also increased lead, improved conversion rate and quality score, and reduced the amount that Orangeries UK had to spend on PPC. Great results!

3. This one done on PPC for MF Fire

MF Fire is something of a niche company, designing and engineering fire products through the latest science. One of their crowns is the Catalyst, “the world’s first and only smart and efficient in-home wood burning stove.” The problem was, being the world’s first there was not a lot of awareness about this product. MF Fire needed to communicate to customers what the product was and how they could benefit from it.

The marketing company developed four key search terms that drew more traffic to the site. Once they had those terms, they created one more landing page to catch traffic with more general searches like “best wood stove”. Then they were able to launch a remarketing strategy that focused on ads to customers targeted by which landing page they had visited.

This strategy had a huge impact for the company, resulting in a greater online presence as well as a 267% increase in PPC traffic, a 59% increase in branded traffic, a 23% decrease in bounce rate, and a 170% increase in total conversions.

The right PPC strategy can truly make a huge difference in PPC spending, as well as web presence and overall sales.

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source https://www.emarketed.com/blog/3-remarkable-ppc-studies-2018/

Make Your Instagram Stories Even Better with These Apps

Instagram stories are a great way to reach followers with important information or create ads that help increase engagement. There are certain strategies and tools available that can make your instagram stories more effective at building awareness and attracting attention from potential customers. You can use apps to enhance your stories and make them more appealing to followers.

An eye-catching option is to add animated text and creative overlays to your photos and videos using third-party apps like Adobe Spark Post. This is a free design app that allows you to add effects and different types of overlays to your posts to make them animated videos. You can choose from various themes, fonts and colors to create an interesting design that will make your story more memorable.

Another app that can be useful for Instagram stories is the InShot app which helps with sizing issues if you don’t have a vertical video. The free app can convert a video from any type of aspect ratio into the right vertical ratio for stories with background margins that you can customize using different colors or a blurred effect. Other options like PicPlayPost allow you to create vertical collages or vertical slideshows using multiple photos.

There are many options for editing apps that can help you create clips for videos like Videoshop or Filmmaker pro. These apps make it possible to put together multiple clips, resize them, edit them and add text. Video stories with several clips can help businesses communicate more information in one single story.

Enhancing stories with these types of apps can make them look more professional and help you boost engagement with more interesting content. Businesses can benefit from putting some thought and effort into their Instagram stories so that followers look forward to viewing more.

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source https://www.emarketed.com/blog/instagram-stories-editing-apps/

Small Business and Crowdfunding

Crowdfunding can be a powerful fundraising tool for personal projects, startups and small businesses who need some financing help. It allows people to seek funds online as a loan for their company that they will pay back with interest over time. People may choose to invest in certain crowdfunds to make a profit while supporting a small business.

One of the reasons businesses choose crowdfunding as a way to obtain loans is that they are often more flexible than bank loans. Getting a loan from a bank can be more complex with a long application process and stricter rules about what the funds can be used for. With crowdfunding it can be easier to apply depending on the website used and businesses have more freedom with their funds.

There are two main types of crowdfunding known as reward crowdfunding and equity crowdfunding. Reward crowdfunding is a way to provide incentives for people to donate their money online such as VIP access, discounts, new versions of products or other rewards. Equity crowdfunding allows investors to provide money in exchange for shares in the company.

The most popular websites used for crowdfunding include Kickstarter which was one of the first reward crowdfunding platforms and is a great option for funding creative projects like films, video games or recording. Another commonly used crowdfunding site is GoFundMe which is one of the largest fundraising platforms with a community of over 50 million donors. These kinds of sites tend to charge processing fees and 5 percent of all funds raised to use their platform.

If you are considering using a crowdfunding platform for your small business it is important to keep in mind that you will need to a marketing plan in place in order to achieve your goal. Overall, crowdfunding can be a useful choice for businesses who need new resources for financial support.

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source https://www.emarketed.com/blog/small-business-and-crowdfunding/

How Does Social Media Assist SEO?

You may not realize how much social media actually assists with SEO Essex. Many of us just think of it as a platform for people to post selfies, updates of their life, and to stay in contact with their friends; however social media plays many more roles than we originally anticipated, including assisting SEO. Let’s take a closer look at how social media impacts SEO.

Brand Awareness

Many marketers believe that the links from your social accounts, such as Instagram, Twitter and Facebook, has an impact on the ranking of your site. By using social influencers, who use social media more than anyone else, they can post your content with links to your site through their channels or blogs. This link building is a very beneficial way to increase brand awareness through social media.

Social Media Profiles

Potentially, your company already has a social media profile account on various different social media platforms. If you do, this is great, as your social profiles influence the content of your search results. Due to social media profiles having a more personal feel to them, as people can relate to them by having their own profiles, they are a great way to get the personality and tone of your company across to potential clients and customers. You will find that your Twitter or Facebook page will get just as many clicks, possibly even more, than your actual site. So, if you don’t already have a social media profile, make an account, today!

Social Media Is Used As A Search Engine

Not only do people search for things on Google, but they also use social media channels, such as Twitter. People are likely to look up any of your company’s latest news or check out your business through your social media channel, so it is important that you have a clear, and up-to-date social profile, online. Search engine optimisation now includes what is searched on social media, not just through original search engines, such as Google.

More Engagement

Social media encourages more engagement form your users, which is a great way to improve your site’s SEO. If the content on your company’s social media profile is shared, it doesn’t necessarily have an impact on your ranking on Google, however, the engagement from your shared content will assist your SEO.

Engagement online is a great way to improve your reputation online, in addition to it being a way to generate leads for your company.

Google And Twitter’s Partnership

Although we aren’t entirely sure what the relationship between Google and Twitter means for the future of search and social marketing, we do know that we have regularly seen relevant tweets for branded searches in Google’s search results.

Twitter posts appearing in the search results, unfortunately don’t assist your site’s SEO – but it will have an impact on your brand awareness.

Taking all of these points into consideration, social media does assist SEO in ways that you may not have originally thought of. Having social media accounts for your company/business is a really beneficial move to make, as it will improve the traffic that visits your site, through visiting your social profile first.  

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source https://www.emarketed.com/blog/how-social-media-assists-seo/

You Can Still Get to the Top of Search Results

Some of the theories behind SEO can make it seem impossible to succeed in getting a higher rank. The idea that sites with more backlinks rank higher and sites with a higher rank tend to get more backlinks seems like a difficult world to break into. Top ranking sites tend to earn backlinks at a much faster rate than lower ranking sites which in turn continues to establish their rank.

How can lower ranking sites move up in search results if they are not getting backlinks as quickly as top sites? Even though it may seem like a vicious cycle, studies have shown that there actually is no proof that getting links at a faster rate leads to a better ranking. This proves that backlinks are not the only answer to getting results from SEO.

There are many cases where sites are able to improve their rank simply by having high quality content rather than focusing on building backlinks. The most important aspects of a site or article is that they are informational, authoritative and offer comprehensive knowledge. High quality content has the same potential to increase search rank than an article with a lots of backlinks.

Google still ranks content based on its quality above all else and if users spend time reading your content because it proves useful in answering your questions than this will serve to increase your rank. Content with original research and new information will perform better than more cursory content. Improving your “dwell time” or the amount of time that users spend on your site can be one of the key factors in increasing your rank.

Backlinks still matter but if you are having trouble with getting enough of them to affect your rank it may be time to focus on creating high quality content that people will keep coming back to.

The post You Can Still Get to the Top of Search Results appeared first on SEM Blog & News - SEO, PPC, Social, Marketing & More.

source https://www.emarketed.com/blog/top-of-search/

Alexa, Grow My Business Online

The voice-activated digital assistant created by Amazon known as Alexa, has powerful potential not only to make the average person’s life easier but to help businesses in a number of ways. The growing popularity of Alexa is changing the way that people receive their information which can have a great impact on businesses. Using Alexa can streamline your business processes and also make it possible for you to connect and interact with customers on a deeper level.

Alexa has a number of features that can help businesses become more organized, speed up simple tasks and collaborate on marketing campaigns. Tools like Alexa’s email assistant and scheduling assistant can help make email marketing and other campaigns more streamlined. They allow you to connect with email accounts, search for data, coordinate meetings and schedule events so that everyone in your company can be on the same page for a campaign.

The voice assistant also has some features that make it possible for small businesses to connect with customers when they search for specific information. For example Alexa now has a feature called “skills recommendations” that provides users with information to help them accomplish a skill. Businesses can show up in the results for these inquiries as an option to help with their question.

Now Alexa also includes notifications which can offer a way for businesses to interact with customers by giving them updates even when they aren’t searching for something. Businesses can utilize these features in order to provide customers with valuable information that could potentially lead to more engagement and purchases. When customers find you through Alexa you can develop a more personalized interaction with them through the voice system.

Digital assistants like Alexa ultimately can be useful both as a business tool and an opportunity to advertise online and reach a new audience.

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source https://www.emarketed.com/blog/alexa-grow-my-business-online/

Compressing Video Files – What You Need to Know

Raw and uncompressed video files can be extremely large, and it isn’t uncommon for HD raw videos to require a few gigabytes for each minute. Needless to say managing files of such sizes isn’t easy, let alone transferring them or uploading them to online servers.

The first thing that you should know is that because uncompressed raw videos are so large – most of the video files that you encounter are probably already compressed in some form or other. However in some cases they may still be too large, and you may want to compress them further to make them more manageable.

If that is your goal, you should start by understanding how the video format affects its compression.

Codecs and Compression

The video codec is the part of its format that determines the compression that it uses – which is why it is important that you know more about it. Some of the more common codecs nowadays include MPEG-4, H.264, and H.265.

Newer codecs tend to have better compression rates than older codecs, and are able to deliver the same quality of video at much smaller file sizes. For example the H.265 codec can reduce the file size of a H.264 video by up to 50% in some cases.

Suffice to say, if your video is in an older codec – you could significantly compress its file size without affecting its quality by transcoding it to a newer codec instead. The one caveat however is that newer codecs are often more limited when it comes to compatibility, so you’ll need to ensure that the device you want to watch the video on supports the codec.

If your video is already encoded in a new codec this may not be an option – but there are other ways to compress videos as well.

Video Bitrate

The video bitrate is literally the amount of data that the video uses each second, and so the video file size is its bitrate multiplied by its duration. By reducing the bitrate you will be able to compress and directly reduce the file size, but at the same time its quality could deteriorate and compression artifacts may appear.

Different videos require different bitrates in order for the video quality to be unaffected, and it varies depending on the resolution and framerate. As an example you could refer to YouTube’s recommended upload settings so you know what to expect.

Assuming you’re willing to compromise the quality of the video slightly however, you can reduce the bitrate to lower than its recommended settings. In short you will want to balance out the video quality against the file size of the video, and find a compromise that satisfies you on both counts.

How to Compress Videos

To start compressing videos using either of the methods described above, you will need software that allows you to convert and transcode videos. Nowadays there are several tools that you can use that range from video converters to specialized video compressors. For example you could try Movavi Video Converter as a place to start.

Typically the first thing that you should do is identify the format (i.e. codec) that the video is using, and determine whether or not transcoding it to a newer codec with better compression is an option. If it isn’t, you can then try lowering the bitrate gradually while observing the affect it has on the video quality.

It should be noted that in some cases you may be able to reduce the file size of your videos through other means – such as by removing any unnecessary parts from the video. While technically that isn’t ‘compressing’ the video, it is an effective option that you should consider.

At the end of the day you should now know everything that you need to in order to compress your videos. All that remains is to try it out – and see how it works in practice.

The post Compressing Video Files – What You Need to Know appeared first on SEM Blog & News - SEO, PPC, Social, Marketing & More.

source https://www.emarketed.com/blog/compressing-video-files/