Are you one of the many businesses that have a registered trademark on your products, services, or company name? In case you didn’t already know, Google doesn’t actually register trademarks.

But that doesn’t mean you can’t choose to request an investigation of infringement by advertisers outside of the ones you authorize.

Listen, trademarking is an expensive and time-consuming process.

One of our many duties here at Direct Online Marketing is to address any infringement upon our clients’ trademarks in Google Ads by alerting clients to another company’s use of their trademarks in search engine results pages.

Let’s take a few minutes below to discuss the tools at hand to properly file a formal complaint against advertisers with Google when we find unauthorized trademarks in ad text.

Who Can File A Google Ads Trademark Complaint?

• The owner of the trademark
• An attorney of record listed on the trademark registration
• A representative of the trademark owner based at a parent company headquarters (think a brand manager, product marketer, or communications director)
• Someone the trademark owner has notified Google has the authorization to act on their behalf
• Other associated parties (for instance, a Google Premier Partner advertising agency)

Want a Premier Google Partner’s
help filing your trademark complaint?
Call 800.979.3177 today.

How Do You File A Google Ads Trademark Complaint?

Google makes this process pretty straightforward. Below is a four-step process for submitting a trademark complaint in Google Ads if you believe another advertiser is in violation of the Google trademark infringement policy.

1. Review The Google Advertising Policy Guidelines

Review Google’s Advertising Policies. Note that their trademark policy varies by region, so please review them closely if you feel your brand has fallen victim to this, especially in a country represented in the European Union or the European Free Trade Association.

2. Produce Proof Of Another Advertiser Misusing Your Trademark

Locate an example of where someone is misusing your trademark. If it’s a national issue, you can do this just by doing a search on google.com. If it’s a localized issue and outside of your area, you can use Ads’ Ad Preview and Diagnosis tool to mimic any location.

To use this tool:

1. Click the Tools tab
2. Under Troubleshooting, click “Ad preview and diagnosis”
3. Enter your trademark term. Select location, language, device, and audience type (if necessary).
4. Press enter to create the search result preview box and scroll down.

Before you go too far through this process, it’s worth noting that a reseller and informational site that uses this information may be protected against any kind of infringement action if:

• The landing page of their ad is meant to sell the products and services that use the trademark
• The landing page is found to simply provide information or specific details related to the trademark

3. Collect Your Trademark Infringement Information In A Google Sheets Document

Create a Google Sheets doc or excel spreadsheet. This is just for your own internal use, but we find it extremely helpful.

Below is an example of kinds of information you will want to have on hand in case you need to send more information.

• Date Sent
• Date Received Reply
• Search Engine – if using different search engines
• Status: Removed or Not?
• AIMS Service Ticket or # – this will be the number to refer to when communicating with Google
• Site Owner / Search Term
• Ad Displayed (text version)
• Display URL
• Destination URL – copy the destination URL by right-clicking onto the ad’s headline
• Location (ex. Washington, DC)
• Screenshot the Ad – this is not always necessary, but helpful when Google responds asking for it (which they often do)

4. Complete The Google Ads Trademark Complaint Form

Fill out the Google Trademark Complaint form.

You will be required to fill out the form and submit for review. The form is self-explanatory, but you will need specific information in order to complete the process. Most importantly, you will need to know the following:

• Ads Account #
• Trademark owner’s name, address, phone, and email
• Countries where the term is trademarked
• Registered status (yes or no)
• Whether the trademark is on a word, design, or both
• Application or Registration #
• Your name
• Title
• Company Name
• Relationship (ex. trademark owner or advertising agency that is authorized to act on your behalf)
• Address
• Phone #
• Email

Please note, the Google complaint form is ordered differently than above. You will be asked a few additional questions, which is where the spreadsheet will then be put to good use. You will also need to describe specific details concerning the “Scope of complaint” and select either only specific advertisers or all advertisers. Once you are finished filling out the form, click submit.

Next Steps Following Your Submission Of A Trademark Infringement Complaint

A Google representative will notify you that the complaint has been received; the issue will then be investigated. You may need to provide Google with additional information such as a screenshot (as you are not able to input an image into the complaint form).

That’s it. Pretty simple and quick.

Running through this process 3 times a week allows you to stay on top of competitor ads that could potentially limit your ads from showing. Most importantly, this small task will help prevent a company from gaining value from your trademarked term.

For other options on how to respond when a competitor targets your brand name with their PPC and SEO strategies, we strongly suggest you check out our post on responding to competitors who target your brand name.

For more on trademarks and other legality related to SEO and advertising in search engines, please check out any of the following:

• Want Approval For Resellers And Partners To Use Your Trademark In Google Ads?
• Google Now In Legitimate Trouble over Trademarks
• You Can Use Competitor’s Brands in PPC, But Do You Want To?
• How SEOs Can Protect Themselves Legally

Key Takeaways on Trademark Infringement in Google Ads

• Google allows advertisers to bid on competitors’ trademarked terms as keywords; however, the use of trademarks in ad copy is restricted without authorization.
• Trademark owners can file a complaint with Google to prevent unauthorized use of their trademark in competitor ads.
• To protect your trademark, you need to have it registered in the relevant territory and provide evidence of infringement when submitting a complaint to Google.
• Monitoring your brand terms regularly is key to protecting your trademark and maintaining control over your brand visibility in search.

If you’re interested in learning how you can drive better results with search engine marketing, schedule a digital marketing consultation.

This article was updated to add additional information on May 5th, 2025.

The post How to Protect Your Brand From Trademark Infringement In Google Ads (Updated 2025) appeared first on Direct Online Marketing.

How To Do SEO For SearchGPT

Face it: AI isn’t leaving – no matter how much we hate it. So, what can we do now? Optimizing your website for ChatGPT is increasingly important these days if you want to stay competitive. With so many people using AI for quick answers, making sure your site is friendly for these tools can boost your visibility big time. By structuring your content clearly and including relevant keywords, you make it easier for ChatGPT to pull accurate information from your site. This means more accurate and helpful responses for users, leading to more traffic to your site. Plus, having well-organized, AI-optimized content can improve your overall search engine ranking. In a nutshell, a little effort in optimization goes a long way in staying ahead of the curve. Direct Online Marketing has even launched AI Marketing Services ourselves. Read on to learn about how you can optimize your content to appear more within AI Search Results.

How To Optimize Your Website For ChatGPT…. And How To Use ChatGPT To Optimize Your Website

As OpenAI preps to launch their own competitor to Google, the concept of optimizing your website for ChatGPT or the OpenAI search engine becomes even more important. Below is our detailed information on how to do SEO for ChatGPT, whether you are a novice or an advanced web user. The most important thing to remember through all of this is:

Why should YOUR website be considered an authority?

On that note, continue on to learn more about how you can optimize your website for ChatGPT and the OpenAI Search Engine competitor to Google.

How Can I Optimize My Website? A Quick Guide

First, The Basics: How To Optimize Your Website?

“But, how do I optimize my website?” you may be asking. If you haven’t even started SEOing your website the old fashioned way, you may be getting ahead of yourself trying to understand SEO for ChatGPT and the new OpenAI search/AI system they are calling 4o.

So, let’s quickly cover How To Optimize Your Website

How Do You Do SEO For Your Website?

Optimizing your website for Google search – and other search engines – involves several key strategies that enhance content and technical aspects through updates to your site’s code, content, and structure.

First, you need to make sure your content is high-quality, relevant, and keyword-optimized. This is key!

Conduct thorough keyword research to understand what terms your target audience is using and incorporate these naturally into your content.

Use compelling titles, meta descriptions, and headers to make your content more appealing to search engines and users.

Regularly updating your content to keep it fresh and relevant also plays a crucial role in maintaining and improving your search rankings.

“How Do I Optimize My Website For SEO?” – Technical Talk:

On the technical side of things, make sure that your website is mobile-friendly and loads quickly, as these factors significantly impact your search rankings. The slower the site – the worse your traffic will be, the worse your rankings will be, and the worse your conversions will be. Speed is essential.

Implementing clean, efficient code and using responsive design principles can improve user experience and search engine visibility.

Additionally, optimize your website’s structure with a clear hierarchy and internal linking, making it easier for search engines to crawl and index your pages.

Using tools like Google Search Console can help you monitor your site’s performance and identify any issues that need addressing.

So, now that you have the basics on how to optimize your website, lets ask the big question… How Do You Do SEO For ChatGPT?

How To Use ChatGPT For SEO?

Using ChatGPT for SEO opens up new ways to streamline content creation and keyword research.

ChatGPT can generate optimized content, such as blog posts, meta descriptions, and product descriptions, that integrate relevant keywords naturally. By inputting prompts with specific topics and target keywords, ChatGPT can deliver content that ranks well while maintaining readability. Additionally, it can assist in ideation by offering suggestions for new content topics based on trending keywords or gaps in existing content. This allows marketers to develop high-quality, SEO-friendly content quickly.

Another powerful way to use ChatGPT in SEO is through automating repetitive tasks like updating title tags or generating variations of content for A/B testing. ChatGPT can create multiple iterations of meta tags, titles, and headings, enabling easy testing to find what works best for SEO performance. It also supports competitive analysis by reviewing content from competitors and providing insights on how to improve your own site’s SEO strategy.

How To Optimize Your Website For ChatGPT

How To Do SEO For ChatGPT?

AI is finally here, and it is named ChatGPT. And it’s smart. Wicked smart.

Gone are the days of AOL Instant Messenger chatbots – today’s AI is intelligent, witty, and well-read. 

Coming up in AI responses to queries, especially those from ChatGPT, is increasingly becoming a focus for SEOs and digital marketers this year. But how do you optimize your website for ChatGPT and other AI bots?

In this article, we will go right to the artificial intelligence engine itself, as well as provide some general tips for search engine optimization that can help future-proof your website for the new advancements in AI that are around the corner.

Where Does ChatGPT Get Its Data?

Currently, ChatGPT does not scour the web on it’s own – it is fed data, and it uses that data to learn. While that data IS from the Internet and many websites, it is currently out of date (it is from 2021), but it is in the process of being updated soon with current 2023 data.

When this happens, it will take the information it was fed and update its answering capabilities, including references to websites within its search and query results. 

“The training data for ChatGPT was cut off in 2021, so it is up to two years outdated as of 2023. However, it still has a vast amount of information on a wide range of topics, and its training data includes text from diverse sources such as websites, books, and articles, which provides a broad base of general knowledge. But it is important to keep in mind that some information and events that have taken place since the training data was cut off might not be reflected in its responses.”

ChatGPT

The current understanding is that if you rank well for various queries in the new set of data and the continuous flow of data following, you will show up more frequently in the results ChatGPT gives to its users.

But how can you do that?

How To Do SEO for ChatGPT

According to the prompt I asked ChatGPT in the development of this article…

“As ChatGPT is an AI language model developed by OpenAI, it is not possible to optimize a website specifically for it. However, here are a few general tips for creating a website that is friendly for language models and search engines:

How To Optimize For ChatGPT

1. Again, just like we said above – use clear, concise, and well-structured content: This will help language models and search engines understand the content on your website and provide more accurate and relevant results.
2. Utilize headings and subheadings: This makes it easier for language models and search engines to understand the structure of your content.
3. Include relevant keywords: Use keywords relevant to your content in your headings, subheadings, and throughout your content to help search engines understand the topic of your website.
4. Provide high-quality, original content: Search engines and language models prefer websites with high-quality, original content over sites with low-quality or duplicate content.
5. Make sure your website is easily accessible: Ensure that your website is easily accessible to both users and search engines by avoiding broken links and fixing technical issues.

These tips can help ensure that your website is well-structured, easily understood, and provides a positive user experience, which can improve its overall visibility and ranking in search engine results.”

ChatGPT, 7/30/2024

Sure, we believe you.

To Optimize For AI, Optimize For Voice Search

One of the clearest understandings we have regarding the information given back by ChatGPT is how much it seems to prefer natural human language, and when questions are both Asked and Answered within the content. This presents strategies akin to how an SEO or webmaster may optimize their website for voice assistants, like Google Home and Amazon Alexa. 

“Optimizing your website for AI tools like ChatGPT is crucial in today’s digital landscape. By structuring content clearly and incorporating relevant keywords, businesses can enhance their online visibility, ensuring that AI-driven platforms accurately represent their information and connect them with the right audience.” – Billy Wright, Lead Digital Marketing Strategist at Direct Online Marketing.

How Do You Optimize Your Website For Voice Search?

Here are some tips on how to best optimize your website for voice search and voice assistants.

Use conversational language: Voice search queries tend to be more conversational and longer than text-based searches, so use language that is natural and easily understood.

Optimize for local search: Voice search is often used for local queries, so make sure your website is optimized for local search by including your business name, address, and phone number (NAP) on your website.

Utilize structured data: Use schema markup to help search engines understand the content on your website, including your business’s NAP and information about products and services.

Provide quick answers: Voice search is often used to find quick answers to questions, so make sure your website provides concise and accurate answers to common queries.

Make sure your website is mobile-friendly: Many voice searches are conducted on mobile devices, so it’s important to make sure your website is mobile-friendly and easily accessible on all devices.

By following these little tips, you can help improve your website’s visibility in voice search results and provide a better user experience for voice search users.

Get more tips from our team on how to optimize for voice search by checking out this resource, How to Optimize for Voice Search.

How Do You Use ChatGPT As A Search Engine? – The Future Of SearchGPT

Will ChatGPT replace Google in the future? It’s the question many webmasters, digital marketers, and SEOs keep asking – but no one really knows what’s in store. ChatGPT has its own canned response to questions about it’s future as a potential search engine, stating, 

“While OpenAI may choose to develop other models with web crawling capabilities in the future, ChatGPT itself is not designed to crawl the web.” 

ChatGPT

For an SEO like me? That’s doublespeak for Coming Soon.

UPDATE: It did come soon.

In fact, ChatGPT Search now exists and it delivers results very similar to Google, but not the same as Google.
And guess what? You can do SEO for it….

A Digital Marketing Agency That Does SEO For SearchGPT

For more information on how you can get your website optimized with AI Marketing Services, contact us today.

Note: This article was updated January 15, 2025 to include new information including a link to Direct Online Marketing’s AI Marketing Services page.

The post How To SEO Your Website For ChatGPT In 2025 appeared first on Direct Online Marketing.

Why Should You Link Your Google Ads Console to Google Search Console?

Um, because you’ll get more data. DUH!

By connecting Google Search Console (GSC) with Google Ads you get a snapshot glance of paid vs. organic keywords. You will get data at the Search Query and Keyword levels so you can see the incremental value of paid vs. organic terms.

This should be really great news for paid advertisers and organic search campaign leaders alike. Google’s spin is that you can see new, organic opportunities and new, paid search opportunities. Equally, you can see – in a really simple report – where you are performing well organically and make adjustments to drop paid search bids or pause keywords altogether if you’re on a limited budget. This is especially great news whether you’re doing both yourself or if you’re working in an agency that provides both PPC and SEO to the same client.

How To Create a Google Search Console Linked Account in Google Ads

• Tools Needed: Google Search Console, Google Ads Console
• Time Required: 10 minutes
• Estimated Cost: $0

Similar to linking Google Ads to Analytics, click on the gear icon in the upper right corner, and select Linked Accounts. You’ll see an option for Search Console. Follow these steps:

1. 1. Access ‘Linked accounts.’ Click on the Tools button on the top navigation of your Google Ads dashboard. Clicking this will produce a dropdown of 20 different options. Click the link titled  “Linked Accounts” under the Settings section.
   2. Select ‘Search Console’ from your list of options. Since first releasing this feature in 2013, Google has added several other options under the “Linked Accounts” heading. Search Console is one of the last options in the list, located in the 9th position of available options – fifth row, right-hand side. Click the link for ‘DETAILS’.
      
   3. Click the link titled “LINK” to launch Search Console. Pretty self-explanatory, we think.
      
   4. Enter your website address, and click “CONTINUE”. Again, we also find this step to be pretty self-explanatory. One note of caution: make sure your domain names in each account are a match. For instance, if you use https:// and www in front of your domain name in Ads, make sure you select the Search Console account with the same naming convention. You are using https, right? Of course you are.
      
   5. Voila! Your Search Console account is now linked to your Ads account. Depending on whether or not this is successful for you, you might receive one of the following results from your attempt at linking these accounts.
      
      Here is what you should see if your Search Console account was successfully linked to Google Ads.

If you have already verified ownership of your site in Google Search Console – congratulations, you’re all set!

If you haven’t claimed your site, simply click the blue link for “Claim it at Search Console.” This will direct you to Google Search Console and provide the recommended methods for verifying your site.

Need more help? Check the Google Help article here or contact a friendly DOM digital advertising specialist (link below).

The Paid & Organic Report: The Mother Lode of Google Performance Data

The Paid & Organic Report can be found under the Predefined reports tab (formerly known as the Dimensions tab). By the way, if you’re not familiar with this section of Google Ads, take some time and play around. There are so many insightful reports here.

To get to the Paid & Organic report, navigate to Basic > Paid & Organic.

Check out the screenshots below. Although the search terms and other personal information has been blurred out, below is a synopsis of what you’ll see in the paid and organic report:

“This table shows how your paid and organic results performed for every search that triggered an ad or organic listing.”

The click details and other data updates once a day and we do not believe that you can see historical data, rather it starts accruing once you link the accounts. However, our Ads reps were not certain about this at the original time of publication. Over the last five years, we have confirmed that as such :).

Key Takeaways on Connecting Google Ads to Search Console

• Linking Google Search Console with Google Ads provides valuable organic search data that can improve paid search campaign performance.
• This integration allows you to identify keywords performing well organically and adjust your paid search bids accordingly for better budget management.
• By seeing both paid and organic data side-by-side, advertisers can make more informed budget allocation and keyword bidding decisions.
• The combined data helps you understand the incremental value of running paid ads alongside organic listings for the same search queries.
• This integrated reporting reveals instances where paid ads are essential to support weak organic rankings, and where organic visibility is strong enough to recommend lowering ad spend.

Conclusion

Google keeps giving us more and more reporting features from within the Google Ads interface. You can see competitive data, analytic data, funnel data, data…..data…..data! Now there’s even more! It’s almost like Google wants you to be successful.

Hell yeah, they do! We love that they’re tying all their properties together. Instead of being an outlet mall, Google Ads has evolved into being a one-stop-shop.

If you found this article helpful, you might want to check out one of these other posts on getting the most out of Google Search Console for your SEO efforts.

• How To Make the Google Knowledge Panel Work For You
• Set Your Course In Google Search Console With International Targeting
• What are Core Web Vitals and What Should I Do About Them?

To get more information on this topic, contact us today for a free consultation or learn more about our status as a Google Premier Partner before you reach out.

This article was updated to add additional information on April 28th, 2025.

The post How To Link Google Ads To Google Search Console (Updated 2025) appeared first on Direct Online Marketing.

We built Direct Online Marketing on the idea that digital success comes from meeting people where they are—and being found when they’re ready to buy. That principle still applies, but the search landscape isn’t just shifting anymore—it’s accelerating into new territory. And we’re expanding right alongside it.

As large language models like ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini gain traction as information gatekeepers, brands can’t afford to ignore how they’re represented in AI-powered search. So we’ve added a new layer to our SEO services: Optimization for AI Search and Generative Engines.

This isn’t SEO as usual. AI-driven search engines don’t return a page of blue links—they generate synthesized answers. That means the strategies we’ve used over the past 19 years to get our clients ranked on Google need to adapt to how AI models understand, evaluate, and source information.

We now help clients position their brands as reliable, consistent sources for AI-generated responses. That includes:

• Structuring content to increase citation in AI-generated answers
  
• Strengthening brand authority and relevance in training datasets
  
• Monitoring LLM responses to key brand queries
  
• Collaborating with internal teams on strategic content placement for AI visibility
  
• Optimizing for queries favored by AI users
  

The same core SEO principles still apply—quality content, strong technical foundation, clear site architecture—but the targets have expanded. With apologies to our friends at Bing, DuckDuckGo, and regional players, search doesn’t stop at Google anymore. It extends into the prompt box of every user asking questions through a language model.

Businesses want and need to show up at the spot where decisions are made. That includes Google and Bing. And now it includes AI platforms shaping user behavior before they ever see a traditional search result (or SERP for fellow search engine nerds).

As a Premier Google Partner in the top 3% of agencies globally and a strategic IGAP partner, we’ve always moved where the data tells us to. Now it’s telling us to go where AI gets its answers—and make sure our clients are part of them.

AI Is The Future Of Digital Marketing

We’re not waiting around for the industry to settle down. We’re out front, doing the work, helping brands stay ahead of the curve. And we’re doing it with the same transparency, precision, and month-to-month accountability that built DOM in the first place.

If you’re interested in leaving your competitors in a cloud of your AI dust, contact us today for a free consultation and take a look at our AI Marketing Services.

Want to learn how you can game AI to show your website? Read our guide on How To Do SEO For ChatGPT.

The post We Can Make Your Brand Show Up In AI: How Direct Online Marketing helps businesses appear more in ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, and more appeared first on Direct Online Marketing.

Excluding placements in the Google Display Network (GDN) isn’t just a hygiene tactic—it’s a strategic lever for improving ROI and campaign efficiency.

GDN Placement Exclusions

Google’s AI-driven placement algorithms are continuously improving. Right now, though, they still lack the nuance to fully understand brand suitability or the nuanced goals of a specific campaign. That’s why the proactive exclusion strategies we detail below are important.

Start by considering the context in which your ads appear. Certain websites or app categories—such as mobile games with accidental clicks or sensationalist news sites—may technically deliver impressions, but they rarely contribute to meaningful engagement.

Looking at your placement reports clues you into patterns that you can take action on: high impressions with low conversions, unusual CTR spikes, or bounce-heavy traffic sources. These indicators often point to placements worth excluding.

Audience intent is crucial. Even on high-traffic, reputable sites, your ad might not belong if the user’s mindset doesn’t match your offer. For example, placing a B2B SaaS ad on a recipe blog won’t align with user expectations, regardless of the domain quality.

Brands with international campaigns should also consider cultural and legal sensitivities. Some domains or categories might be legally acceptable in one country but damaging in another.

GDN exclusions aren’t set-and-forget. They’re part of a feedback loop. Make it routine—monthly at minimum—to review your placements and performance metrics. Couple this with developing your own dynamic exclusion list, informed by your brand’s specific needs, vertical trends, and prior campaign data.

Background on the Google Display Network

With more than a million websites across the globe, the sheer size of the Google Display Network is one of the main reasons why display and retargeting campaigns are such strong marketing tools. Spanning myriad topics and interests, reaching a target audience based on what matters to them has never been easier.

A high-performing campaign leverages the Google Display Network by serving highly targeted ads to users somewhere across the mammoth network of websites and publishers. Odds are, if a user is seeing a display or retargeting ad, they are seeing it on a website in the GDN.

However, there are thousands of websites with which brands do not want to be associated. This is why it’s a good idea for advertisers to consider blocking or excluding certain websites for placements of their ads on the Google Display Network.

Why Exclude Some Websites on the GDN?

It may seem counterintuitive that blocking placements on some websites would lead to better campaign performance, but there are instances where blocking placements can be extremely beneficial. There are two main reasons why advertisers should exclude websites on the Google Display Network.

1. Spammy, Inappropriate, or Unrelated Websites

Considering how large the Internet is, it’s pretty clear that no matter what a person is interested in, there is likely a large community and hundreds of websites dedicated to that interest. This covers a gamut of topics from the very wholesome to the very “adult.”

Advertisers probably don’t have the luxury to consider and evaluate every single website on the GDN. That would take hours. But serving ads on a spammy, inappropriate website (or one that’s just not very related to your brand) can have unintended consequences. For example, say a butcher shop sets up a display campaign, and several of its ads are placed on websites whose audiences are passionate about the vegan lifestyle and animal rights. Not a great match.

2. Saving Money on the GDN

Besides avoiding placements because of a mismatch for relevancy or inappropriate misrepresentations of a brand, the big reason for blocking placements on the display network is to save money. When targeting is dialed in and a retargeting campaign is set up correctly, advertisers can reduce costs by eliminating irrelevant websites.

Say that a SaaS software company runs a display campaign but they don’t exclude a whole ton of websites geared towards teenaged and college-aged gamers. These placements eat away at the ad budget, and they don’t contribute meaningful conversions to the campaign.

By eliminating a whole slew of such websites, advertisers leveraging the GDN can ultimately get more out of their campaigns with lower costs if they refine where ads are being placed.

How to Block Placements on the GDN

Seasoned digital marketers may know about website exclusions, but they can be easily overlooked by less-experienced users of Google Ads.

At the most basic level, placements can be excluded by opening your campaign in Google Ads and clicking on the “Placements” tab. From there, hover the mouse over the top navigation and click on the “Exclusions” tab.

Once in this new area, exclusions can either be selected by website, YouTube channel and video, app, or by entire app categories.

It’s important to keep in mind that Google Ads’ exclusion tools don’t cover every website worth excluding from a campaign, and there are thousands it will miss.

Using an exclusion list can be a mighty weapon for any digital marketer working inside the Google Display Network — one you’ll want to come back to over and over again.

The Definitive Website Exclusion List (Free Resource!)

For years, Google Ads professionals have either had to resort to creating their own exclusion lists or borrowing lists of URLs from fellow marketers.

The team at Direct Online Marketing has created the exclusion list to end all exclusion lists.

This list is the culmination of our two decades as an agency running campaigns for clients in Google Ads. (To supplement our internal list, we also took every list of website exclusions we could find online and compiled it all in the above Google Sheet.)

At a stunning 70,000+ website URLs, this list is quite comprehensive as it covers such categories as dating, mobile, gaming, quizzes, sports, and more. And hey, it’s free!

Because this list can be found as a shareable Google Sheet, we encourage you to share this with anyone who would find it useful.

Notes About High-Cost, Low-Performing Categories

If you’ve taken a look at our list, you’ve probably noticed how we broke out several website categories.

High-Cost, Low-Performing – One of our categories addresses a large number of high-quality and reputable websites and publishers (such as The New York Times, CNN, etc.). We’d generally recommend excluding or considering blocking placements on some of these sites for direct advertisers. The placements may make sense if you’re using GDN just for brand awareness and reach. Because exclusions can be a good method of keeping ad costs down, blocking placements on high-quality websites can help stretch budgets a lot farther.

Key Takeaways About Google Ads Placement Exclusions

• Excluding placements on spammy, inappropriate, or unrelated websites helps maintain brand integrity.
• Advertisers can exclude placements directly in Google Ads so that ads reach their intended audience.
• Blocking select websites can improve ROI by reducing wasted spend on placements that don’t convert.
• Direct Online Marketing offers a comprehensive list of over 70,000 website URLs for exclusion.

Final Thoughts

Using the behemoth Google Display Network is how marketers are finding success with display and retargeting campaigns, but not every website is a good opportunity for advertising. By leveraging our comprehensive list of websites to exclude ad placements, advertisers can easily avoid the negatives of placing ads on inappropriate websites and reduce costs associated with their campaigns.

For those of you who share our vision in making this list the best it can be, we thank you and welcome any submissions.

To get more information on this topic, contact us today for a free consultation or learn more about our status as a Google Partner Agency before you reach out.

This article was updated to add additional information on April 21st, 2025.

The post Google Ads Placement Exclusion List for Google Display Network (Updated 2025) appeared first on Direct Online Marketing.

Table of Contents

• Respect Privacy & Maintain Marketing Data
• What Is Microsoft Advertising Consent Mode?
• Why Consent Mode Matters for Performance-Driven Businesses
• Consent Mode & Audience Targeting
• What You’ll Need to Implement Consent Mode
• UET Tag
• Consent Management Platform (CMP)
• Tag Updates
• Microsoft Advertising Consent Mode Is Crucial for these Industries
• Healthcare
• Higher Education
• eCommerce & Retail
• Professional Services
• Navigating Online Consent

Respect Privacy & Maintain Marketing Data

Online privacy is a fundamental part of how digital marketing works today. Between cookie restrictions, regional data laws, and a public that’s more aware of how their information is used, marketers are facing a new kind of friction. Tracking isn’t guaranteed. Consent is king.

That’s where Microsoft Advertising’s Consent Mode enters the conversation.

Consent mode is like a translator, bridging the gap between respecting individual privacy choices and achieving your marketing objectives.

It doesn’t magically restore the data you’ve lost from declining opt-ins, but it does offer a way to preserve some critical signal paths. For businesses that rely on performance data to make budget decisions—or to prove ROI—it’s worth understanding how this tool works and how to put it to use.

What Is Microsoft Advertising Consent Mode?

Consent Mode in Microsoft Advertising (also known as Bing Ads) is a way to communicate user consent preferences regarding cookies and data tracking to the Microsoft Advertising platform. It operates based on the signals users provide through cookie consent banners or similar mechanisms on your website.

It is designed to help advertisers respect user privacy choices while still collecting essential performance data. It works through Microsoft’s Universal Event Tracking (UET) tag and modifies how that tag behaves based on a visitor’s consent status.

Think of it as a dimmer switch, not an on/off toggle. If a user gives consent, you get full tracking. If they don’t, consent mode steps in to adjust how data is handled; instead of halting all data collection, it provides aggregated and anonymized information about user behavior. This lets Microsoft Advertising continue sending anonymized pings that help maintain some degree of campaign insight.

This isn’t new ground. Google has already introduced a similar feature. But Microsoft’s version focuses on its own ad ecosystem, which includes Bing Search, the Microsoft Audience Network, and LinkedIn placements. The core idea is the same: keep some measurement alive, even when cookies are out of the picture.

Why Consent Mode Matters for Performance-Driven Businesses

Consent mode won’t recover everything. But without it, your ad tracking risks going dark the moment a user declines cookies. That means incomplete conversion tracking, faulty retargeting audiences, and misattributed campaigns. The stakes are high—especially in verticals where long sales cycles, repeat visits, or multi-touch journeys are the norm.

Here’s what consent mode helps preserve:

• Partial visibility into how users interact with your site
• Anonymized signals that support audience insights and modeling
• Compliance without fully sacrificing marketing performance

In an environment where campaign dollars need to justify themselves, blind spots in your analytics can do real damage. Consent mode can’t eliminate the fog entirely, but it does help cut through some of it.

Consent Mode & Audience Targeting

Implementing Microsoft Advertising Consent Mode enables you to perform audience building and retargeting efforts.

While specific user-level data might only be available about users who affirm consent, anonymized insights about users who deny consent can still inform the creation of broader audience segments. This allows for more effective targeting while respecting user choices.

Perhaps most importantly, with more reliable conversion data, you can make better-informed decisions about your ad spend. The result? You can optimize your campaigns for greater efficiency and return on investment.

Consider two identical campaigns. The one leveraging consent mode provides a more comprehensive view of conversions, revealing previously unseen customer journeys and allowing for smarter budget allocation.

What You’ll Need to Implement Consent Mode

Deploying Microsoft Advertising Consent Mode involves integrating it with your website’s consent management platform.

There are typically two main routes you can take: manual implementation or using Google Tag Manager:

• Manual implementation involves directly coding the consent mode parameters into your website; this method offers greater control but requires technical expertise.
• A more streamlined approach often involves using Google Tag Manager, a tag management system that simplifies the process through pre-built integrations.

Regardless of the method chosen, the implementation process defines how user consent choices are captured; then Microsoft Advertising tags are configured to respond to these signals.

Boiling this down, there are 3 things most businesses will need to engage with to get their consent mode in order.

UET Tag

If you’re not already using Microsoft’s Universal Event Tracking, this is the time to start.

Consent Management Platform (CMP)

You’ll need a CMP that can communicate with Microsoft’s Consent Mode API.

Tag Updates

Your implementation will need to signal user consent choices through the Microsoft script. This means your development team (or tag manager setup) needs to be configured to pass the right consent flags.

Microsoft Advertising Consent Mode Is Crucial for these Industries

Industries feel the sting of missing conversion data differently. Plus, running afoul of regulators can mean fines, lawsuits, and loss of trust with your clients.

Healthcare
Regulatory pressures around user data already limit remarketing and targeting in the healthcare arena. Consent mode offers a rare middle ground: privacy-compliant signal capture that doesn’t compromise PHI.

Higher Education
Students often take weeks or months between ad clicks and form submissions. Without consent mode, the link between those steps disappears.

eCommerce & Retail
Attribution is everything. Consent mode helps fill the holes left behind by missing cookie-based conversions.

Professional Services
Remarketing lists, lead tracking, and multi-step funnel data can all erode fast without a plan to handle declining consent.

Navigating Online Consent

The digital privacy landscape will continue to evolve, with emerging regulations and user expectations shaping how businesses can operate. Microsoft Advertising Consent Mode helps marketers navigate these changes.

Consent mode allows you to continue gathering valuable insights while respecting user choices.

If your campaigns run on tight margins or operate in data-sensitive spaces, Consent mode should already be on your radar. It won’t replace lost cookies, but it can soften the blow and keep your decisions grounded in real signals.

Want help implementing Microsoft Advertising Consent Mode or setting up a privacy-forward tagging strategy that doesn’t kill performance? Let’s talk.

The post Microsoft Advertising Consent Mode appeared first on Direct Online Marketing.

Table of Contents

• DOM and IGAP Bring You International Marketing Tools
• Proprietary Google Tools for International Insights
• Translate Your Brand to the World with Localization by Google
• 1:1 Support from Google’s International Growth Team
• Competitive Insights Across the World from Google
• DOM Is Your Partner for Global Growth
• Increased ROI
• Faster Market Entry
• Sustainable Growth

DOM and IGAP Bring You International Marketing Tools

Direct Online Marketing has earned a spot in Google’s International Growth Agency Program (IGP), a rare achievement that directly benefits our clients.

This isn’t just a badge; it’s a gateway to resources and support that directly translate into tangible benefits for your global ambitions.

IGAP connects Google Premier Partner agencies (such as DOM) with exclusive resources and expertise that help businesses expand their reach globally. For our clients, this means access to cutting-edge tools, expert insights, and international business liaisons that can accelerate growth in new markets.

Proprietary Google Tools for International Insights

In the complex world of international marketing, data is your compass. Our participation in Google’s program grants us access to exclusive IGAP tools that dig deeper than standard analytics. Granular insights into market trends will be available, along with the same for consumer behavior and competitive landscapes across geographic regions. This isn’t just a data dump; it’s observations voiced in plain language with numbers to back them up.

Imagine being able to pinpoint the exact search terms driving traffic in a country, or identifying emerging trends before your competitors. These tools allow us to craft hyper-targeted campaigns that are more likely to resonate with local audiences.

IGAP tools will help our clients maximize ROI and minimize wasted spend.

Translate Your Brand to the World with Localization by Google

IGAP brings you a team of localization experts. Their efforts extend the reach of your brand to countries all over the world.

Localization is the process of presenting your messaging to people in another culture who speak a different language. It’s not merely a word-for-word translation, though.

Localization is a deeper process of considering social and regional differences, which prevents cultural misunderstandings that often occur with one-to-one translation services.

DOM and IGAP help you pitch your unique value proposition to new markets in new languages.

1:1 Support from Google’s International Growth Team

One of the biggest advantages of DOM’s membership in this program is the direct line to Google’s International Growth Team. We have one-on-one access to experts who can provide tailored guidance on your specific challenges.

Google can feel like an unresponsive giant at times. We know the struggle of trying to contact Google support, or trying to track down an answer to your problem on help forums. It’s tough to get a real person on the phone. And you can easily wile away countless hours down rabbit holes trying to see whether someone else has had the same problem before.

This 1:1 support from Google as part of DOM’s membership in IGPA means we can quickly address challenges, adapt to market changes, and capitalize on emerging opportunities.

Competitive Insights Across the World from Google

Imagine having a bird’s-eye view of competitors in your target international markets. From that vantage point, you could see how other companies are performing in different markets. You could get a sense of their marketing strategy.

DOM and IGAP bring you this potent perspective. Google provides IGAP members with real-time competitive insights into markets around the globe.

With this intel, we can pinpoint exactly where competition is sparse, where competitors are thriving, and how to differentiate your brand. This may take the form of adjusting keywords, changing demographic targets, or tweaking your messaging to better resonate with the local culture.

With competitive insights from IGAP, DOM can help you identify market gaps and stand up to fierce competition with targeting digital marketing.

DOM Is Your Partner for Global Growth

Our participation in Google’s International Growth Agency Program translates directly into tangible benefits for your business.

Increased ROI

Our enhanced expertise and access to Google’s resources mean more effective campaigns and a higher return on your investment. We make sure your marketing dollars work harder.

Faster Market Entry

DOM helps clients enter new markets quickly and efficiently, minimizing risks and maximizing opportunities. We help you think through the most advantageous way to start selling into a new country.

Sustainable Growth

Data-driven strategies ensure long-term, sustainable growth in international markets. That’s why at DOM our analytics team is integral to meeting our client’s business objectives. Our analysts deliver comprehensive reports of user behavior, PPC performance, and SEO trends that enable you to make data-driven decisions.

By combining our expertise with Google’s cutting-edge tools and support, we’re empowering businesses to conquer new markets and achieve sustainable growth. We’re not just an agency. We’re your global growth partners.

The post DOM Is a Member of Google’s International Growth Agency Program appeared first on Direct Online Marketing.

You may have heard the old adage, “Those that can’t do, teach.” Well, if you have been challenged with the task of promoting training courses online, then you know that statement is almost totally false.

There are plenty of things to “do” when you are trying to support a training course with promotion online.

Organizations around the globe invest over $360 billion annually to level up their workforce in areas such as:

• Alignment
• Analytics and Measurement (click this link to learn more about our Google Analytics services)
• Automation and Robotics
• Compliance
• Content Development
• Employee Safety
• Engineering
• IT and Technical Training
• Leadership
• Performance Management
• Sales
• Strategic Planning

Developments in high-speed internet connectivity worldwide in recent years have also provided training companies with the ability to move their teachings online. Now, in addition to building a connection with people in real life, training courses can be consumed (and re-consumed) by students on demand.

Whether your company is creating a new training course or training is what you’ve done for decades, there has never been a better time to get involved in the knowledge sharing economy.

Below, I’ve compiled 20 digital marketing ideas that are both actionable and effective for you to start promoting training courses.

1. Auditing Templates

There are many ways a company might realize their need for your training solutions. Few of those ways are more effective than by giving them a template to conduct a self-audit. Creating auditing templates for prospective clients in Google Drive, Microsoft Office, or PDF format is an excellent way to:

• Help them discover their pain points
• Introduce your methodology to alleviating those pain points
• Provide natural conversation starters for your business development team

Bonus tip: For promoting training courses, you should be willing to provide these templates at no charge to potential clients. But at the same time, you should also gate these templates behind a registration form to aid your demand generation efforts.

2. Best Practice Guides and Tutorials

Employing content marketing—such as best practice guides or in-depth tutorials—allows you to showcase your organization as a thought leader.

Your potential clients likely have continuing education requirements or newly placed industry standards for which they need certification. A decision maker in HR or some other management role may not be up to speed on the new requirements.

The act of creating content serves as an educational opportunity for these people. To help them get the information they need to keep their people at the top of their craft.

Bonus tip: Embed a lot of share buttons on content like this so it can easily be bookmarked, emailed, exported, printed, or shared on enterprise communication platforms like Slack.

Are you launching a training course but also a provider of a software solution? Need more leads? We’ve got you covered with 14 more ideas just like the one above in this post… 15 Actionable Lead Generation Ideas For Software Companies

3. Blogging As A Tactic For Promoting Training Courses

Companies interested in growing their brand awareness through search engines should be creating at least one new piece of blog content per week. And yes, this applies to any company, regardless of industry.

Companies in the training industry are no different. In fact, regular blogging might be even more critical in the training industry. A higher amount of knowledge sharing should mean a more significant percentage of thought leadership.

Bonus tip: No matter your preferred communication medium, plan on creating a blog post that is at least 300 words in length once every five business days.

4. Case Studies To Promote Training Courses

Whether you provide training services to individuals or groups, what you do has an impact on the people you help level up. Let the results of your work speak for themselves by creating case studies to showcase your greatest successes.

In both personal and corporate training, people want to get the sense that you, specifically, can help them in their “unique situation.” Training companies should focus their case studies around the types of people and companies they want to attract to their business.

Are you a personal development company that wants more married businessmen as clients? Make a case study featuring one!

Do you have a leadership training course for the financial sector? Build a case study featuring employees from any of the “Big 5” accounting firms.

Bonus tip: Want to acquire visits from keyword searches to your case studies? Optimize the title tag, URL slug, and case study title in the following manner. Check out this example data set for this case study from OppenheimerFunds.

• Title: Oppenheimer Training Program: Custom Training To Identify Growth Companies
• URL: /case-studies/oppenheimerfunds/
• Case Study Title: OppenheimerFunds Improves Growth Company Identification By 80% After Training

5. Checklists and Worksheets

Checklists and worksheets are effective marketing assets to create. When they are optimized through SEO or supported through digital advertising, they can also be a high ROI item to drive sales leads into your pipeline.

One thing to remember about creating checklists and worksheets is that they can become outdated over time. This is especially true in industries where standards or regulations evolve over time. Training companies in education, government, healthcare, IT and legal will want to be mindful of this.

Bonus Tip: Create an interactive document that can be bookmarked in a browser and regularly revisited by your users. Is interactivity not possible? Host your checklist or worksheet as a branded Google Sheet for users to copy to their own Google Drive accounts.

6. Competitor Awareness

Whether you want to go toe-to-toe with an industry leader or you want to solidify your brand’s dominance, consider creating content about your competition. This is a high-value SEO and content marketing strategy for your brand if it classifies itself as a “challenger” in your industry.

Create pages of content on your site that either:

• Directly compare your training courses to the market leader and niche brands
• Identify a shortcoming of the services provided by your market leader/niche brands
• Offer an influencer the opportunity to compare you against your competitor as a guest post

Then proceed to highlight the strengths and unique value your training courses offer compared to your competition.

Bonus Tip: To promote training courses, pages like this allow your site to rank organically in keyword searches. You can also run digital advertising campaigns for keywords towards the end of the buyer’s journey like “Dale Carnegie alternatives” and “skillsoft vs mindgym.”

7. Digital Market Development Funds

“Integration and usage of technology in our day-to-day lives is at an all-time high, as we continue to shift to a ubiquitously digital world,” said Brian Fourman of Cooperate Marketing, a marketing agency in Chicago that solves complex problems for OEM’s and major service providers.

Some of the latest research by Nielsen, ComScore and other indicates that Americans spend close to 11 hours a day consuming media and nearly four hours of that consists of some form of digital across any number of platforms.

For marketers that have access to digital Market Development Funds (MDF’s), adopting a digital-first strategy can prove to be highly beneficial. Not only is a portion of your digital campaign already paid for with MDF’s, but when implemented correctly you can hyper-target your intended audience to convey the right message, at the right place, at the right time in a truly engaging and often personalized fashion. Plus, the cost of entry is significantly less than traditional media in which one is often forced to purchase the entire market (DMA).

Digital first strategy allows you to run any number of campaigns simultaneously to fulfill key marketing objectives at each level of the purchase funnel, whether to build brand awareness, familiarity, consideration, and/or to generate leads and convert them into sales. In addition, digital media allows for easy-to-implement message testing (A/B) that can be modified on the fly.

Copious amounts of readily available data further support your customized endeavor and provide quantifiable results that can easily be tracked. By knowing how to interpret and use this data, you can optimize current/future campaign creative to provide truly impactful results that guarantee the greatest ROI.”

8. Email Newsletter Sponsorship

Sponsoring email newsletters is a great way to infiltrate the inboxes of a significant number of highly targeted readers without the need to be CAN-SPAM compliant.

That doesn’t mean this tactic lacks strategic thinking. When you select an email newsletter to sponsor, here are three things to keep in mind:

1. Target professional organizations or networking groups of the industries you help train.
2. Have those organizations prove how engaged their readers are with data. You don’t want to just buy a list!
3. Create an exclusive offer to maximize engagement and conversions with your ad.

Bonus Tip: Support your exclusive offer or sponsorship of an email newsletter by creating a specific landing page for it. Extend the reach of your offer by applying SEO best practices and adding retargeting codes to the page for Bing, Google, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Twitter.

9. Expert Roundups

You might be tired of reading “expert roundups”—but your target clients can’t get enough of them. Long list articles of helpful hacks, hints, tips, and tricks exist on nearly every business strategy out there.

Expert roundups—whether published on your site or elsewhere on the web—are a great way to improve the personal brand of your training team members. Additional benefits include:

• Increased thought leadership opportunities for your brand
• Increased visibility for your content on social networks
• Increased traffic and backlinks for expanding your SEO efforts

Bonus Tip: Need to find expert sources for your first roundup besides your own training team? Signup for a journalist/blogger account on Help A Reporter Out (HARO). HARO is a 3x per day newsletter sent to over 800K sources looking for opportunities to get media coverage.

10. Giveaways and Sweepstakes

Who doesn’t like getting something for free?!

When promoting training courses, letting potential students “try before they buy” can be an irresistible way to draw them in. Simply give them access to one session, program, or class at no cost.

Sweepstakes work in a similar fashion. However, instead of giving away your intellectual property, you will be packaging something together to entice future students to give you their contact information.

One disadvantage of this strategy is that you risk receiving a large number of registrants that may not result in quality sales opportunities.

Bonus Tip: Promote your giveaway or sweepstakes in a press release or by providing exclusive demos to bloggers and other online publishers. Don’t forget you can also shamelessly promote training courses in your outreach, too! You can tap into their follower counts and subscribers for leads while also earning high-quality backlinks to your domain.

11. Historical Optimization

Over the last few years, historical optimization has become an incredibly valuable SEO strategy for companies with a large archive of content.

To briefly summarize this tactic, find an old blog post (published six or more months ago) on your site that either:

• Generates a lot of traffic (good idea), or
• Converts (better idea)

Then refresh the content and re-publish it with a more recent date.

Establishing your trainers as thought leaders are critical to your success in promoting training courses. Historical optimization is a great way to get long term value out of content you published long ago.

Bonus tip: Have trainers who used to blog for your organization that are no longer there? Create a general author account on your blog using your company name, like “(Company Name) Team.” Change the author of a post if they are no longer a part of your team to that author.

Historical Optimization helped Corporate Visions improve their lead generation by 37% from SEO.
Learn more here.

12. Influencer Marketing

Influencer marketing has had a ton of hype over the last year, as well as a lot of unwanted attention. Despite that surplus of hype floating around, a dedicated influencer campaign has a lot of potential.

If your company can partner with influencers on social media to increase awareness amongst a large fan base, the CPM can be very effective compared to traditional media buying. Just make sure that any influencer you invest in actually motivates their followers and fans to act.

Creating an exclusive offer for any influencer will be vital to seeing success with a campaign of this type.

Bonus Tip: Check out this comprehensive beginner’s guide to influencer marketing if you want to learn more about how to leverage this for your organization.

13. Infographics To Promote Training Courses

Infographics still have a place in the world of digital marketing, especially since most people still do not enjoy reading online.

If your company conducts its own original research or surveys, share your best statistic or a quotable statement in this visually appealing format. Engagement with your content and the likelihood that your target students remember what you wrote will undoubtedly improve.

Bonus Tip: Create a high-resolution copy of your infographic for companies that want your content as posters for their walls. You could sell them to take advantage of a non-traditional revenue stream or offer the high-res version as a piece of gated content.

14. LinkedIn Advertising

Don’t let LinkedIn Learning’s existence (formerly Lynda.com) scare you from the possibility of leveraging the most extensive professional social network to promote your training courses.

According to a case study from LinkedIn, e-learning solution provider, CrossKnowledge launched display ads, InMail, and sponsored updates for a campaign titled “Bye Bye Boss” in 2015.

The results?

“Benchmark-beating” click-through rates and over 50 leads generated on the campaign microsite.

Bonus Tip: No matter what platform you use for your landing pages, take advantage of LinkedIn AutoFill for your form fields. With the click of a button, visitors can become leads by populating your form with their LinkedIn profile information.

15. Microsite Development

“The use of microsites provides the perfect launchpad for new services,” says Denise DeSimone, Chairperson of C-Leveled, a full-service branding strategy and marketing agency.

Update: On April 21, 2022,
we announced our
acquisition of C-Leveled.

“Microsites are quick and easy to build, so they give you the ability to target particular audiences quickly. In some cases, microsites can be as much as five times more effective in generating leads than traditional campaigns.”

Bonus Tip: Optimize your main site and microsite for similar keywords, and support each site by targeting those keywords in a PPC campaign. Doing this allows presents an opportunity to occupy a minimum of 25% of a search engine results page.

16. Podcast Interviews To Promote Training Courses

Participating in podcast interviews is another opportunity for your talent and training staff to showcase their thought leadership.

But have you ever thought about hosting your own podcast? Podcasts have low production costs and listenership is rising. Plus, podcast listeners have over four times better brand recall on ads than traditional display campaigns.

Bonus Tip: If you host your own show, invite guests on your show who could be potential sales leads. In the training industry, consider hosting executives in HR or with specialization in companies you want as clients.

17. Quora Promoted Answers

Quora Promoted Answers are a relatively new advertising option on this quickly emerging platform.

You can reach a broad group of people on Quora who are researching questions and answers related to your area of expertise with a Promoted Answer.

For training companies who are already familiar with answering questions on Quora, you might not notice anything different in how you find places to share your insights.

What changes in a Promoted Answer? Two things:

1. The label next to the answer (Promoted By).
2. The name of the person and the business promoting the answer.

Bonus Tip: Has someone unaffiliated with your company answered a question on Quora that helps in promoting training courses offered by your company? Promote that answer instead of yours to get it shown to more people in any feed.

Interested in leveraging Quora for your SEO efforts? Find out if Quora can help your SEO efforts here.

18. Research and Surveys

If you want to make the case for your training solutions to potential clients, there may not be a better way to do that than by conducting research or surveys.

Do your clients have a common pain point they need addressing when they hire you? They probably are not alone.

Survey executives in your industry related to the common pain point your clients have. Then publish the results of your survey in a whitepaper or other type of report.

Then, do a press release about your research (and promoting training courses) and share it with the trade publication media in your industry for increased visibility.

Bonus Tip: Don’t forget to send the report you create to everyone who submits an answer to your survey.

19. Retargeting To Promote Training Courses

It doesn’t matter what you call this—remarketing, cyberstalking—it’s a crawesome (creepy + awesome) marketing tool.

Reach the 99% of visitors to your website that didn’t convert by retargeting them with display ads. You can use this strategy in search engines, display ads, social networks, and mobile apps.

Talk about creepy and awesome!

Bonus tip: If your training solutions require a long sales cycle, make sure you have your audience list set to as long a time period as possible prior to the start of promoting training courses.

20. Webinars To Promote Training Courses

If you are in the training business, then you likely have some comfort with public speaking. Leveraging live, web-based video conferences will be different than being in person with your clients, for sure. But it is a great way to connect with your target audience at scale, at any time they want to consume your training.

Best of all, if you host a webinar, your message can reach an audience of viewers and listeners from all over the world.

Bonus tip: It’s okay to put your webinars behind a gated form, but make sure the video content can be made available on demand. In today’s competitive business climate, you don’t want to make people wait to hear your training when there are others out there.

Key Takeaways on How to Market Training Courses Online

Develop Auditing Templates

Providing self-assessment tools helps potential clients identify their own paint points and training needs, which you are then in prime position to offer to address with your course.

Publish Best Practice Guides and Tutorials

Sharing in-depth content establishes your authority and educates your audience; this also makes them more likely to invest in your training programs.​

Maintain an Active Blog

Blogging regularly is critical in the training industry to improve search engine visibility and to keep your audience engaged with topics that you cover in your courses.​

Create Detailed Case Studies

Showcasing success stories from past clients demonstrates the tangible benefits of your training.

Host Webinars

Webinars enable you to reach people across the globe—plus, they give people a concrete sample of what your training is like.

Final Thoughts On Promoting Training Courses Online

Like many lucrative industries that are both knowledge and skills-based, promoting training courses effectively in today’s marketplace requires agility, consistency, and a little bit of luck.

This is true whether you are looking to go to market with a new training course, or you are part of an established training company looking to elevate your status.

Luckily, no matter what actionable digital marketing strategy you choose to promote your training course, they all can help you accomplish the following:

• Disrupt the market leader who is slow to take action
• Generate leads for your programs and direct sales
• Improve your company’s authority and thought leadership positions in your industry
• Increase awareness of your brand and programs through more web traffic
• Provide instant and long-term value to your most coveted buyers

You already know now is the time to increase your market share of the $360 billion training industry. If you need help from an online marketing agency to decide which strategy is the best to start snagging your share, just contact us.

This article was updated to add additional information on April 14th, 2025.

The post 20 Actionable Digital Marketing Ideas for Promoting Training Courses (Updated 2025) appeared first on Direct Online Marketing.

Algorithms rule search results, but humans still rule connections.

SEO moves fast in a world with AI-driven search engines. You can’t afford to pretend things are the same old, same old — your search rankings won’t play along. Google keeps integrating AI into search results, Bing’s Copilot is taking off, ChatGPT’s search engine is here, & everyone’s just trying to figure out what comes next.

But AI doesn’t replace people. It sharpens the tools people already use.

Mastering SEO in 2025 means knowing which algorithms matter most, how to use the right keywords without sounding like a robot, and finding fresh ways to make sure actual humans read your content.

That’s exactly why we’ve set up this interactive, hands-on webinar. It’s made for communicators, PR pros, content writers & anyone else whose job is to make content stand out in search results without losing that human spark. 

If you’ve felt lately like SEO’s a slippery slope and the slope’s only getting steeper, this webinar’s exactly what you need. 

Who

PR communicators, content creators, digital marketers—really anyone whose job involves getting content noticed by humans & algorithms alike. If SEO ever caused you a headache, or if you’re tired of guessing what works, this is for you.

What

It’s two days packed with everything you need to handle SEO when AI is calling the shots. Here’s what you get out of it:

• SEO Trends for 2025: Google’s newest AI tools, Bing’s Copilot, ChatGPT’s search engine—everything changing the SEO game right now.
  
• Keyword Research: How to find & use keywords that actually get noticed without sounding forced or awkward.
  
• Better Writing for SEO: Learn how to write blogs, press releases & web copy that real people like and search engines understand.
  
• Alternative Platforms: Real-life tactics to rank high on Gemini, Perplexity & ChatGPT’s new search tool, not just Google.
  
• PR + SEO: Practical ways to tie your PR work directly to better search visibility and higher domain authority.
  
• Real-Life Exercises: Hands-on practice that gives you skills you can use immediately.
  

When

May 1 & 8, 2025
1:00 – 4:00 p.m. ET

Key Takeaways

• You’ll know exactly what’s changing in SEO—no guesswork, no panic.
  
• You’ll walk away with keyword skills that feel natural instead of robotic.
  
• You’ll know how to create content that humans love and AI rewards.
  
• You’ll be ready to handle whatever new search platforms pop up next year.
  
• You’ll see how PR and SEO go hand-in-hand to boost your visibility.
  

Why You Should Attend

SEO isn’t exactly getting simpler, folks. The rules change every year, sometimes even every month, & the stakes keep getting higher. The quicker you learn, the less stress you’ll have about staying visible online. You’ll walk away feeling confident about the future—not worried about it.

How to Register

Reserve your spot right here: https://theeventnexus.com/2025-master-seo

Meet Your Webinar Experts

Justin Seibert

President, Direct Online Marketing

Justin Seibert’s been mastering search engines since before “SEO” became a buzzword—back when Google was still young & dial-up was common. In 2001, he turned a small online marketing division of a Los Angeles financial firm into a multi-million-dollar machine.

In 2006, Justin founded Direct Online Marketing (DOM) with a simple plan: help businesses everywhere grow online without smoke-and-mirrors marketing. Transparency, results, no long-term contracts. This practical approach helped DOM earn a spot among the top 200 Premier Google Partners.

Justin racks up awards almost as often as frequent-flyer miles. Hanapin Marketing recognized him as one of the top 25 PPC experts around, the West Virginia SBA named him Entrepreneurial Success of the Year in 2015, & he was named West Virginia Exporter of the Year in 2017.

Digital marketing events from Buenos Aires to Bucharest often ask Justin to speak. He’s given talks at universities, been featured in global publications, & he still makes time for family. He and his wife Kristin have three kids, one of whom clearly has a sharp sense of humor.

Jonathan Bentz

Sr. Digital Marketing Strategist, Direct Online Marketing

Jonathan Bentz doesn’t mess around with SEO fads—his approach gets straight to business. As DOM’s Senior Digital Marketing Strategist, Jonathan shapes SEO projects that directly boost client revenue. Not just rankings, actual dollars.

Jonathan began his career at West Virginia University with a journalism degree before spending more than 10 years sharpening SEO strategies in tough markets like hospitality & cloud tech. At DOM, Jonathan quickly aligned corporate branding and SEO strategies into one clear, powerful vision.

Jonathan focuses on the technical side of SEO without making things complicated. He treats Google as the AI-driven trust machine it is. Build trust, grow traffic, earn revenue—simple, direct, effective. He has shared his expertise with publications like Entrepreneur.com, Ecommerce Times & CIO Online.

Outside DOM, Jonathan mentors startups at WVU’s Vantage Ventures and volunteers on his church’s leadership team. He’s passionate about creating economic opportunities in underserved communities—& whenever he can, Jonathan spends quality time with his young kids and family.

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Can You Use Competitors’ Names In Google Ads? Can They Use Your Brand In Google Ads?

Branded search engine ranking positions (aka SERPs) can make or break your online presence within your market and your customers’ minds. But when you find a competitor using your brand name as part of their Google Ads or SEO campaigns, the stakes can get raised by a considerable margin.

When a user performs a search, visitors click on the first ads or organic results that seem most relevant to them.

The chances of winning that click are higher when you show up in top positions on relevant searches.

For many years brands have tried to undermine competitors’ names to rank higher and poach visitors through covert PPC and SEO tactics. When this happens, competitors getting search visibility on your brand name become a huge detriment to your sales by hijacking your brand’s reputation.

Leveraging competitor brand names via search engines is a common tactic and an issue that must be addressed to maintain both your rankings and your branding.

Savvy competitors — often with agencies behind them — combat these challenges and capitalize on the opportunity.

The Basics of Advertising and Doing SEO on Competitor Brand Names

Just to make sure we’re on the same page here, let’s take a brief second to fully define what we’re talking about.  When we talk about competitor brand names, there are a few different keyword types to pay attention to if you want a full picture of which competitors are trying to take over your brand. The three most common types are:

• Competitor’s actual business names (like Pepsico buying ads or optimizing for Coca-Cola keywords)
• Competitor’s branded products (Pepsi buying ads or optimizing pages on Sierra Mist’s site for Sprite keywords)
• Competitor’s executive names or prominent thought leader names (Walmart running ads on searches of Jeff Bezos promoting CEO Doug McMillon)

The process in search advertising works the same as bidding on any other search term.  You select the competitor term(s) you wish to bid on, set how much you’re willing to pay, and set up ads for that ad group. Voila, you can have your ad appear when someone searches for your competitors.  There’s no cost to you until and unless someone clicks on one of your ads.

In SEO, the process is also very similar. Publish a piece of content on the subject matter, optimize it for the search term, and then build backlinks to the page so that it ranks well.

Legal Questions – Is This Allowed?

It’s important to understand that leveraging a competitor’s brand name is quite common in digital marketing.

You may be thinking to yourself at the moment — is this even allowed?

Yes, yes it is.

For the most part, using such advertising tactics is OK provided you are not deceptive in your practices. This means that if you are intentionally trying to mislead searchers, you may find yourself in hot water.

You need to make sure you’re clean in your ads and other marketing materials by being upfront about who you are. And doing that well means representing specific reasons customers often prefer you over your competition. If your name, your competitor’s name, or other branded term isn’t trademarked, then there’s no issue at all as far as the search engines are concerned.

Where courts have generally upheld advertisers’ rights to advertise — non-deceptively — on competitor brand names, this is America. Anyone can sue anyone for any reason, so legal costs are a real consideration.

By the way, if you’re really into this sort of thing, check out Eric Goldman’s Technology & Law blog.  It’s the single best source on the Web for following these types of lawsuits regarding search engine marketing.

With that disclaimer and plug out of the way, let’s dive into how you can protect the reputation you’ve built against competitors trying to draft off of your brand.

Google Ads Options to Address Competitor Bidding

Campaigns explicitly created to target competitor brand searches are expensive and typically produce low numbers of conversions.

If this is happening to you, take solace in knowing that your competitor is spending some serious cash. But you still want to reclaim what is yours and reduce any adverse impacts on your brand.

When reacting to competitors running ads on your company’s or product’s name in Google Ads — and other search engines — you have some options.

Option 1: Protect Your Name by Running Ads on Your Own Name

Branded campaigns use your company’s brand name as a keyword. This play typically yields high conversions at a low cost per conversion – and the more your brand is known and trusted, the more impressive the results.

As you can see in the above example, Salesforce is running Google ads on its name, taking up the top ad position. Two competitors – Pipedrive and SugarCRM – also run on Salesforce keywords, positioning themselves as an alternative to this well-known CRM.

Searchers click on ads at the very top of a page more often than other positions. This is especially true on mobile because the visual real estate is so much smaller.  By running these ads, Salesforce ensures searchers will see its ads first before seeing alternatives.

When you run ads on your name, you have a much better chance of influencing how searchers interact with your brand in the SERPs. This way you have more control of your campaigns, and you’ll always be first in search results on your brand.

Note: Some companies don’t like to bid on their name as they think that it’s an unnecessary cost, taking away conversions from organic search – clicks they don’t have to pay for. They also feel that bidding on their name is wasting money that could go toward reaching new searchers who aren’t looking for them. But if your competition is running on your name, do you really want people looking for you to see the competition first?

Option 2: Petition Google Ads for Trademark Protection

We highly recommend trademarking your brand if you haven’t done so already. Be aware that it can take up to six months or more to receive a trademark even if you don’t face other companies with similar claims.

The significant benefit of having a valid trademark as that there’s a formal process to petition Google to disallow your competitors from using your name in their ads if you own a trademark.

They can still run on your name even if you have this trademark protection, but at least they won’t be able to use your name in the ad copy, except in very limited circumstances.

If you’d like to learn more, check out our step-by-step guide on how to protect your trademark in Google.

Want a Premier Google Partner’s
help filing your trademark complaint?
Call 800.979.3177 today.

Option 3: Fight Fire with Fire

If you’re interested in going on the offensive, you can try to beat your competition at their own game and run ads on their branded terms. Just keep in mind that this tactic is prone to have the same high costs and challenges as discussed earlier.  Here’s why.

Search advertising platforms allow you, in theory, to run on almost any keyword you want, including your competitors’ names.  But in all cases, they want to make sure your keywords are relevant to your business.  Otherwise, consumers will have a harder time finding information related to their searches and the whole PPC model starts crumbling.

And since you aren’t your competitor, Google will quickly give those keywords in your account a low Quality Score.

Keywords with a low Quality Score (caused by low clickthrough rates and other metrics) will end up costing you more than average on a per click basis. If your keywords are not relevant to your brand (i.e., because they aren’t your brand), then your search advertising platform will make you pay for it. In a best-case scenario, your quality score for competitor’s brand names may peak at a 3/10.

As we mentioned earlier, these kinds of campaigns come at a high cost and a lower chance of successful conversions. However, conversions don’t have to be the goal of this play.

Going on the offensive allows you to fight fire with fire if your competitors are already deploying these tactics. It will also draw some awareness to your brand for potential new customers who only knew about your competitor.

Note: It is possible to find a competitor’s ad come up when you search your own business name even if they don’t have you in their keyword crosshairs. If you see that, it’s probably one of two scenarios:

• Search retargeting (RLSAs): If you have been to the competitor’s website, their ads may be displaying based on your website habits.
• Similar audiences for search: The competitor may have a “similar to” retargeting audience and Google’s machine learning is considering your search habits similar to those of the competitor’s website visitors.

Either way, it’s the algorithm doing what it does best!

Other Pros and Cons of Bidding on Competitor’s Brand Names

Pros

• It can work.  A lot of times people are interested in that competitor for a specific reason that won’t help you at all: trying to get hired, a vendor looking up directions, etc.  But for the consumer doing research – or maybe a current, unsatisfied client looking up a phone number, the payoff could be handsome.
• It will jerk their chain.  Double edged sword here (see Cons), but after seeing your ad on their name, internally they may devote a lot of executive resources figuring out what can be done.  Plus, some people just really, really like ticking off their competitors.
• More competition should drive up their prices to bid on their name. While this means they’ll be spending more money they could be devoting elsewhere, their Quality Scores will likely be so much higher than yours, that the additional cost may not add up to much.  Unless they weren’t advertising on their name at all before and decided to start doing so because of your ads.

Cons

• Your time.  Your competitors may call you up and chew you out about this.  Trust me, I’ve seen this time-suck happen and had advertisers flip their feelings about bidding on competitor names 180 degrees.
• Money.  They may sue you or threaten to do so.  While you could just adhere to their cease-and-desist and potentially be done with it, most companies will at least consult their attorneys about this.  And if they don’t happen to be experts in search – and virtually none are, this can get really expensive.  (BTW, we have consulted with attorneys about this in the past.  If you’re an advertiser or lawyer needing help with this, give us a shout at 800.979.3177.  We can also advise on how to broker a fair peace accord without the courts).
• They may start advertising on your name, which could send up your costs somewhat and also decrease your click throughs.

Be Careful with Dynamic Keyword Insertion

Dynamic Keyword Insertion (DKI) can be a great tool—until it serves up an ad with a competitor’s name who happens to spot the ad. That’s where it goes from clever automation to potential liability.

(See stats and insights from a test of keyword-insertion code in Google Ads that we conducted.)

DKI functions by automatically inserting the user’s search query into your ad text, provided that the search query matches one of your keywords and fits within character limits. This dynamic functionality can enhance ad relevance for generic terms; it becomes perilous when competitor brand names are among your keywords.

For instance, if your keyword is “Competitor Brand Alternatives” and a user searches for “Competitor Brand Product X,” your headline might read “Competitor Brand Product X,” directly featuring your competitor’s name in your ad.

Google explicitly absolves itself of responsibility for any policy violations arising from the use of DKI. (Even in cases where it was the applying a Google Recommendation that introduced DKI functionality into a campaign.) Their policy clearly states that advertisers are accountable for ensuring that their ads comply with all advertising guidelines after keywords are inserted.

The fix is simple: don’t use DKI with competitor keywords. Build static ads with deliberate messaging that highlights your differentiators.

How to Respond When Competitors Use SEO to Leverage Your Brand

Several SEO tactics can solidify your SERP positions against competitors who want to rank in organic search for your brand name, or for when potential customers seek alternatives to your brand.

Much like the Google Ads tactics listed above, you can either take a defensive route or get aggressive with your SEO keyword targeting.

Choose wisely, as this is the perfect time to heed Uncle Ben’s wisdom — because great responsibility is bestowed upon those who wield these great SEO powers.

Option 1: Ranking for “Brand Alternative” Keywords

To dampen your competitors’ efforts, consider creating a page to rank for brand alternative searches specific to your brand name. This page still aims to promote your brand as the better solution, but the idea is to optimize it with your name and “alternative” keywords to make sure it outranks your sneaky competition.

You can also supplement this tactic with content development and link building strategies targeting ‘brand alternative’ keyword phrases. Guest posts and other authored contributions optimized for brand “alternative” keywords can help take up valuable search positions. These opportunities also are good places to score a link back to the page you already created.

By leveraging these two tactics, you can fortify your brand against alternative searches that your competitor targets with their SEO efforts.

Option 2: Fighting Back with Your Own “Brand Alternative” SEO Strategies

When your competitors step up their efforts against your brand, it’s time to consider going on the offensive from an SEO perspective. Some examples include previously mentioned tactics:

• Your competitor running ads on your brand name
• Optimizing a page on their website to rank for your brand name
• Leveraging backlinks to improve their ranking for your brand name

Just like how competitors may create content on their site to rank for keywords related to your brand, you can do the same.

You can accomplish this one of two ways:

1. Optimize for “competitor” + “alternative(s)” — Here you create pages specifically designed to target search users looking for alternatives to your competitor by optimizing for their brand names and “alternative” (e.g. “picasa alternative,” “photoshop alternative,” etc.). This way, your brand will begin to show up when people go to search for their name.

Below is an example of how Lawn Doctor compares itself to several competitors.

1. Optimize for competitor weaknesses — In some cases, search users may be considering a competitor, but also seeking choices.

For example, say you are a project management software looking to position yourself against Trello, a highly recognized competitor. You could try creating content that aims to rank for keywords such as “trello issues.”

Be warned: snatching a top search engine ranking using this approach is highly unlikely without some investment in aggressive link building tactics. But, this approach will undercut your competitor in the following ways:

• They will lose long tail organic search traffic.
• Awareness of your product will increase within their customer and prospect base.
• You will convert new business opportunities from prospects who were not initially considering your brand as a solution.

Final Thoughts — Consult Your Legal Team

Please note: we recommend you consult your legal team to assess risk before trying the more aggressive tactics listed above. Keep in mind that there are times where using terms and phrases — specifically trademarked words, branded words — could have some legal implications.

What ends up happening in situations like this is that – whether mediated expensively through attorneys or done from President to President – a truce is called.  The downside is that it needs to be brokered with each competitor as it can’t be done through the search engines (other than if there’s a legitimate trademark complaint to be filed).

SERPs can make or break your brand so make sure you are taking the necessary measures toward protecting them. Starting with a great defense (owning real estate and top ads on your name) is the best offense.  Ultimately, though, it’s your brand, and only you can decide how to solidify your place in Google search.

Key Takeaways About Targeting Competitor Brand Names

• Using a competitor’s brand name is a common and permitted practice in digital marketing, barring misleading usages.
  
• Competitors using your brand name in their Google Ads or SEO campaigns can divert potential customers.
  
• Trademarking your brand name allows you to request that Google disallow competitors from using it in their ads.
  
• Optimizing content for brand alternative keywords can help prevent competitors from ranking high for your brand name.
  
• Running ads on your own name is one line of defense for your brand.
  

This article was updated to add additional information on April 7th, 2025.

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