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.

As highly capable digital marketers, we have an unprecedented number of tools to help us do our jobs. Last time we checked (a few minutes ago), the most popular marketing automation software, coming in with around 20% of the market share, was Adobe’s Marketo platform. If you have anything whatsoever to do with digital marketing, you know how prevalent Marketo is. Most implementations are centered around their handy landing pages. So most of our Marketo SEO tips are most relevant for the landing page templates, though you can use that platform for other things, too.

Just like anything else you want your customer to find via a search engine, your Marketo pages need to be optimized for SEO. Here are our top tips to get the most out of your SEO for Marketo.

Marketo SEO Tip 1: Just do the SEO thing.

You know the thing we’re talking about: optimize that page for search engines! If you want to know more about how to do that, we have a whole bunch of resources to help you. Trust us, we’re experts. In fact, below is a list of blog posts we’ve written over the years to help you out with some of the SEO basics.

• Image SEO: Does Alt Text Still Matter?
• Internal Links: How Much Do They Affect SEO?
• Why SEO Titles and Meta Descriptions Are Still Important
• Does Duplicate Content Affect SEO?

That said, if you’re up to speed already on the SEO basics, this post is for more advanced users who really want to squeeze the most value they can out of their Marketo assets.

Marketo SEO Tip 2: Learn how to edit html.

We’re not trying to be glib (well, maybe a little), but you will get a lot of mileage out of the simple small step of popping open a copy of HTML Programming for Stupid People, or whatever those books are called, and teaching yourself some basic coding. It’s not difficult—html is definitely one of the easier programming languages to learn—and you’ll enable yourself to do stuff like these sub-tips.

Need a reason to learn to code HTML? Here’s why you should learn to code HTML in case you want some reasons why.

Marketo SEO Sub-Tip A: Add canonical links to your header tags.

Don’t be alarmed, it’s easier than it sounds. You can freely edit the HTML of the Marketo headers (everything between the <head> tags on a webpage). One of the most useful ones is the canonical link. We use canonical links all the time as a way of telling search engines that potentially duplicate content is intentional and need not be indexed. Google famously dislikes duplicate content, and we all know what happens to content Google doesn’t like.

It gets ranked lower. That’s all.

You won’t lose your listing, but your organic searches will suffer. This is especially true for Marketo pages because they tend to multiply based on the SKUs, products, or services being marketed, and similar page content can trigger false duplicate flags to Google’s crawlers. That’s the opposite of what we want.

Marketo SEO Sub-Tip B: Add Google Analytics code and various pixels to the header tag manually.

While you’re editing the header, you might as well take this step while you’re there. By “manually” we mean “by hand,” as in “you have to code it yourself” because Marketo doesn’t let you do it as easily as other web design interfaces (like WordPress, for example). You can get the embed codes from the websites you use to track whatever it is you’re tracking, and your little bit of coding knowledge will come in very handy.

Marketo SEO Tip 3: Make sure your gated content is protected by noindex tags.

One of the most useful techniques for a digital marketer is to put valuable content behind a conversion link, like a newsletter signup. This lets us get something valuable in exchange for something valuable, which your gated content most definitely should be. But if that valuable content is visible to Google, then simple searches can bypass your gate and your hard work goes unrewarded.

Make sure to add the noindex tag in the headers of the pages that host your content, not the landing page itself. That’s a great way to make sure Google loses track of your page, which, again, is the opposite of what we want. Don’t take our word for it—check out Google’s own knowledge base about noindex tags.

Want to get more in-depth on our tips for gated content besides making sure search engines can’t crawl it? Check out our definitive guide to gated content.

Marketo SEO Tip 4: Link to your landing pages on your website.

This could probably be included in Tip 1, technically, but we see it so often that it merits its own mention. The tendency is to pretend like your landing pages aren’t part of your website’s ecology, but that’s not doing your SEO any favors. We’ve already seen how much Google likes links, so don’t be afraid to link it in your site navigation, in blog posts, wherever your favorite links live.

Marketo SEO Tip 5: Make sure you’re secure.

You have to make certain you’re using the https prefix with Marketo, especially when you’re linking to it from your website. Not only does Google prefer secure pages, but a link from a secure site to an insecure one might raise a flag on your customer’s browser. And flags are bad.

Marketo SEO Services

Those might be our most important MarketoSEO tips, but we could go on. If you’re using Marketo then SEO is extremely important for driving leads and sales to your website. Luckily, we’re experienced in optimizing Marketo sites and helping drive growth for your Marketo stores with our SEO services. Schedule a free consultation today and maybe we’ll share them with you.

The post SEO For Marketo: 5 Advanced Tips For Marketo Success In 2024 appeared first on Direct Online Marketing.

How Can I Grow My YouTube Channel?

Back in 2006, Google bought a little website by the name of YouTube for the bargain price of $1.65 billion. Since then, YouTube has become, in effect, the internet’s second most popular search engine. Now was YouTube already on a path to web prominence? Or was its acquisition by Google key to YouTube’s success? The world may never know. (Much like how many licks it takes to get to the center of a Tootsie Pop.) No matter how it happened, YouTube’s rise is clearly our new reality. Ignore YouTube at your peril. Embrace it and bask in its glory. Here’s how to get the most out of YouTube’s video marketing.

Make Great Content To Grow Your YouTube Views

This seems like a no-brainer, but most YouTube videos tend to be, generally speaking, less than broadcast quality. Whether you’re showing off the new fishing rod you just bought or teaching college students how to unclog an apartment shower drain, the jump from “barely good enough” to “great” is smaller than ever. In other words, you can easily improve your game just by following some simple guidelines. A cheap clip-on microphone, compatible with every phone on the market, will immediately elevate your videos’ quality and help you grow your YouTube views.

Utilize Closed Captioning For Your YouTube Videos

YouTube offers automatic captioning, but you should upload a verbatim transcript whenever you can. This will provide a better user experience for anyone who relies on closed captions. Heck, even people who don’t rely on closed captions often use them, especially if they’re using YouTube to learn something. Captions allow users to get the information without turning up the volume on their phones or computers.

Not only is providing captions the friendly, neighborly thing to do, but it can also help your SEO, too. YouTube indexes all of the words contained in your uploaded transcript, which is like getting the milk and the cow for free.

Use the Appropriate Ad Format On YouTube

The variety of ads you can implement on YouTube include 6-Second Bumpers, Pre-Roll Ads, and In-Stream. Are you looking for awareness and brand recognition? Deploy some 6-Second Bumpers. Do you want clicks and conversions? Then you’re probably in the market for Pre-Roll ads. They can’t be skipped and run 15-20 seconds in length. Do you have a 30-second commercial that you want to repurpose? Think about using that for an In-Stream ad. If you want to see all of these in action, just open YouTube and search for something. You’ll see it all.

Target Precisely When Using YouTube Ads

While it’s a bit tongue in cheek to describe YouTube as the second biggest search engine,  it does still have the world’s biggest search engine powering it. They inform each other, too, so what’s good for one is often good for the other. You should leverage that enormous YouTube/Google data network through targeting. Target and find your desired audience using the options for gender, parental status, and personal interests. Narrow down your video placements by searching for specific channels that would be of interest to your ideal viewers. If you find that one type of audience is responding better to your message than another, you can always re-target. That’s the beauty of digital marketing.

Use an End Screen To Grow YouTube Engagement

You’ve made some great content, added closed captions, and targeted the appropriate viewers. Now you should reinforce your brand and inspire your viewers to take their next action. Use the end card as a digital signpost, directing your viewers to their next destination–a landing page with more info and a form to fill, or a product listing or external website, or even a link to your YouTube channel with more videos.

Support Your YouTube Growth Efforts

YouTube is great for extending your brand and driving conversions. However, a multi-faceted strategy embracing many platforms is going to open the door to more success. Use multiple ad types on YouTube, and experiment with your targeting options. Consider running companion campaigns in Microsoft Bing and Google Ads while leveraging your common keywords and targeting wins across every platform you use, whether you use YouTube advertising services or you use SEO services.

If you want even more help upping your YouTube game, get in touch with us today.

The post How To Get More Views On YouTube – The DOM Guide appeared first on Direct Online Marketing.

Below you will find a nice even dozen of our favorite holiday marketing ideas for 2022. Consider these our free gifts to you in an effort to make this wonderful time of the year the most successful for your business.

Offer Some Limited Time Holiday Deals (Even If You’re In B2B)

Although Black Friday is looking less and less like the insane rugby scrum of years past, it is still “a thing” after the world of retail essentially canceled it in 2020 at the height of the global pandemic.

If there’s one thing we associate with Black Friday, it’s getting those amazing deals.

You might think this kind of strategy only makes sense with retail, but it can work for B2B marketing, too. Don’t forget that even though your office may be closed for the holidays, there are many companies that are open during the holidays because they are serving those who are traveling or taking time off. Aside from traditional consumer retail, other industries that regularly operate during holiday time periods include:

• Convenience Stores
• Emergency Healthcare
• Entertainment Venues (think movie theaters, sports arenas, etc.)
• Hospitals
• Hospitality
• Pharmacies
• Restaurants
• Travel and Transportation

For a few standout holiday marketing ideas, you could offer a discounted rate for one of the services you offer tailored to these specific industries. Or a coupon code that accomplishes the same thing. Just remember to make these offers redemptive. Instead of simply giving the deal away, offer it in exchange for completing a contact form, or gate it off with a form to capture some basic information.

If you identify these markets as high relevance for your products and services, prospective clients working during holidays will likely interested in your discounted services.

That’s what we call some “solid leads,” what about you?

Need to DOMinate Black Friday?
Watch This Webinar On-Demand.
Achieve Your Goals!

Setup A Google Performance Max Campaign

If you have an e-commerce site, there is no reason not to run Google Shopping ads. As far as holiday marketing ideas go, Google Shopping should be your bread and butter if you rely on digital channels to generate direct response sales.

However, in today’s modern digital advertising landscape, there is only one way to get your ads showing in Google Shopping… setup a Performance Max ad campaign in Google.

One of the things we’ve always liked the most about Google Shopping is that the ads are a combination of text search and visual ads. The user sees a picture of the item and also relevant information pulled from your feed by Google.

When it comes to setting up a Performance Max campaign so that your ads can be seen in Google Shopping, we are taking a more cautious approach. Instead of telling you to go all in on Performance Max, we strongly suggest running it with a “test and see” mindset.

If this is the first time you are hearing about Performance Max, or simply want to learn more about the basics of Performance Max campaigns before deciding to go all-in on them for your 2022 holiday campaigns, learn more by pressing play on the video below.

Like we said above, you should be taking a “test and see” approach to Performance Max campaigns. So, while you can still have some type of manual control over where your products are being shown, we recommend you continue to use it.

Along with that, if your feed is optimized, Google will be able to automatically pull information such as free shipping and place it in your Product Ads.

During the holiday shopping season, it is more important than ever to keep your feed as updated as possible. What do you think happens if someone clicks on an ad for a product, only to find out that you are sold out? They go somewhere else.

Don’t miss out on sales because of Google’s machine learning putting your products in front of the wrong buyers or because you have overlooked your feed management.

If you have doubts that your Performance Max campaign is ready for the holiday season – mind if we take a look with a complimentary PPC consultation?

Submit Your Product Feed For Free Clicks

At the beginning of the pandemic, we shared an important update Google made to it’s Shopping platform – online retailers could sell products for free through the platform.

Fast forward more than two years later… and those free to sell options are still available on the platform.

If you haven’t submitted your product feed to Google so that your products can be listed in free “Popular Products” search results like the one shown above – what are you waiting for?

Sure, we know these search results look awfully similar to the Google Shopping ads shown above, so how can you tell the difference?

Simple… shopping listings that are supported with advertising will always be labeled with “Sponsored” or “Ad” in the heading before the actual listing.

If you already use Google Merchant Center or Performance Max, you do not have to change a thing to receive these unpaid clicks. While the amount of impressions your products will receive for unpaid clicks will not be as high as if you were paying per click in Performance Max, this can still be a revenue generating strategy for the holiday shopping season.

Want to review your Merchant Center to see your unpaid clicks?
Learn How Here.

Change Up Your Ad Text

Customers are so used to seeing “50% Off. Order Now!” or “Great Deals!” Instead, show them what they want to see… specifically what it is you can offer them this holiday season.

So, be creative with your marketing campaigns!

If you sell gloves, use some copy that reads, “Baby, it’s Cold Outside! Warm Up with a New Pair of Gloves.”

If you sell products that are irrelevant to the cold season, no worries. You can still find ways to use the season to your advantage and inject a little “holiday spirit” in your campaigns.

Dynamic Search + Shopping = Re$ult$.
Learn How This Online Retailer
Improved Sales 115% During Busy Season.

Embrace Retargeting

When done right, retargeting can take your accounts to the next level when it comes to low-cost conversions.

This is the nice thing about retargeting: based on how your audiences are built, you can segment customers by intent.

If you have an audience for an informational page such as About Us, you know that there is some interest, but the customer is probably not ready to buy yet. You can tailor ads specifically for that audience with messaging to entice them to come back and learn more.

Along with that, if you have an audience for cart abandoners, you know there was intent to buy there – but something changed that. If you create ads that give the customer a reason to come back, you can create conversions from missed opportunities.

Learn more about our retargeting services if this isn’t already a part of your digital advertising plans for the holidays.

Lean On Email, Social, And Automation

Your messaging doesn’t need to slow down too much while you’re sipping eggnog, spinning the dreidel, lighting the candles, prepping for a fast, or ordering Chinese food with your dog.

And you don’t have to be on the stick (or at the keyboard, if you’re not a pilot) prepared to make a correction.

Most people aren’t going to be sitting in front of their computers or visiting their favorite websites for new content during the holidays. Rather, this is a perfect time to engage them where they are: on their phones, scrolling social media, and reading email.

The great news about those avenues is that you can write your social media and email marketing messages early, and then schedule them to roll out at predetermined times.

Just make sure nothing newsworthy happens that might make your subject lines or messaging seem tone-deaf.

Learn more about our social media advertising services if you may need a performance boost in these areas for the holidays.

List Holiday Sales Prominently

No one can participate in your sale if they don’t know it exists. To help boost your 2022 holiday sales, make sure your biggest promotions are front and center.

One of the best ways to do this is by incorporating your sale into your branded color design, using a holiday themed banner or other top-of-page display. This immediately makes the connection between your holiday promotions and the holiday shopping rush. Add a call to action and a link to your perfect gift products, or gift cards, and you’ll be ready to go.

Discounts should also be displayed prominently, especially around top selling products. In addition to displaying discounts on product cards and pages, special Black Friday deals, holiday specials, and gift guide call outs can be displayed both on your product pages and other holiday campaign landing pages.

Make It Easy To Convert

This is a year-round tip, but it’s especially important during the peak of the holiday shopping season.

Make sure each product on your landing page is designed with a clear purchasing path, which can be used on both desktop and mobile devices.

In the simplest instances, you can create a button that adds the product directly to the shopper’s cart. You can also display a sidebar with the current cart contents, allowing customers to see what they’ve chosen, and seamlessly check out when they’re ready.

For all your sales processes, the key is to minimize the steps it takes to purchase. The easier the conversion path, the fewer abandoned carts you’ll see all year.

Optimize Your Pages For Mobile Devices

According to Forbes, holiday spending on mobile reached $88 billion dollars last year. While the pandemic brought a lot of us in front of our bigger screens, mobile sales still increased as the calendar flipped closer to the big holidays.

Suffice it to say if your holiday landing pages aren’t optimized for mobile, you’re losing out on a huge consumer opportunity.

To optimize your seasonal landing pages for mobile:

• Make sure that the buttons are large enough to be seen and interacted with on smaller screens.
• Format holiday banners for mobile devices, keeping text size in mind.
• Don’t overload your mobile landing pages with too much text.
• Ensure that getting from products to checkout is simple, minimizing the number of “touches” between your product and cart pages.

Don’t Forget About Microsoft

Think Google is your only option when it comes to search engine advertising for your holiday marketing campaign? Think again. Microsoft can be one of those great holiday marketing ideas because it is an easy to deploy, high volume secondary platform to use to reach your target audience. Why would you want to pass up 20% of the search market?

Microsoft does not have the reach Google has, but it has an audience that has spending power. Microsoft’s search advertising solutions on Bing and across their entire network are great for reaching those that are not as tech-savvy (*cough* parents and grandparents *cough*) because they are less likely to use a browser, or a search engine, other than what Windows devices provide as the default.

Learn more about our Microsoft Ads account management services if this isn’t already a part of your digital advertising plans for the holidays.

Create A Sense Of Urgency

This is true for all product pages, all the time, but the holiday season is a fantastic time for retail sites because the urgency is already built-in!

What you can do is emphasize the timeliness of your sales on your site, reminding your customers that they need to act now if they want to surprise their special someone on time.

One of the best ways to do this is with the popular holiday countdown timer. You’ll see Amazon do this with their Cyber Monday deals, counting down the hours until each product special is gone forever—and it works.

Display your timer above the fold or along a sidebar, where your customers can easily see how much time they have left, and prepare to watch this be one of those holiday marketing ideas that will automatically push your holiday sails up!

Finally, Don’t Forget To Be Sincere

Your employees love each other, even if they fight like siblings sometimes. Your clients think you’re doing a great job, and you’re thankful for the ability to provide them with goods or services this time of year.

The holidays are also about love, acceptance, and gratitude. Don’t be afraid to show that side of yourself to the people who matter to you. We could all use a little more joy these days.

Don’t shy away from incorporating some of these timeless feelings and emotions that well up in the people who will consume the content you create for your holiday marketing strategy.

You might be surprised how far a little “I appreciate you” or “We understand what you’re going through” messaging can go in spreading more of that holiday cheer.

As the calendar year draws to a close, do you find yourself behind pace with your lead generation or sales goals? Even though the holidays are drawing close, there’s still time to meet, achieve, or exceed your goals. Contact us for a free consultation to learn how our digital marketing services can help you accomplish your best  year yet! 

The post 12 Profitable Holiday Marketing Ideas To Make This Your Best Year Yet appeared first on Direct Online Marketing.

Machine Learning and AI have changed everything about The Internet. The new Helpful Content algorithm update from Google is another example of this.

Google has created this new so-called Helpful update using Machine Learning and Artificial intelligence to better understand the content on a page similar to the way a human would. As a result, it can tell if the content on a website is actually helpful to a human user or if it was written solely to pull in search engine rankings and traffic.

What Was The 2023 Helpful Content Update Like?

The Google September 2023 Helpful Content Update significantly impacted the SEO community, showcasing less volatility compared to previous updates. Despite reduced volatility indicated by various tracking tools, the SEO industry observed notable ranking changes. This update seemed to affect more heavily SEO-optimized sites rather than average websites. Different industries experienced varied effects, displaying a spectrum of winners and losers. This update appeared to have more of a substantial impact on the SEO industry compared to the general website owner landscape.

How Does The Google Helpful Content Update Work?

As the algorithm processes websites, it uses a large number of unpublished criteria to determine the following specific items about the website it is reviewing:

1. Is the content written to answer a real question or guide an actual human to a factually correct result?
2. Is the content unique to the website it is on and not just aggregated from a number of sources?
3. Is the website hosting this content an authority – or – is it reputable?
4. Is the content low in quality or simply written to gather search engine rankings?

Content that is not written to directly answer a question or guide a user to the actual information they are seeking may receive a negative impact within Google search results.

Who Does The Helpful Content Update Impact?

While the Helpful Content Update may impact all websites across the web, the most likely candidates to be negatively impacted by the Helpful Content Update are the following types of websites:

• Aggregate Review sites for Products or Places: Sites that have minimal unique content and are simply a gathering of information will likely not fare well following the Helpful Content update in 2023.
• Websites That Simply Exist For Search Traffic: If someone has created a website simply to answer questions on the web and therefore gain a large number of search engine rankings so they can promote advertising, they are likely to get their rankings impacted by the algorithm update.
• Film/Media Sites That Provide Content For Searches They Cannot Answer: Large video game news sites, movie rumor sites, and more that frequently post articles without knowing the answer or actually providing the answer will likely be negatively impacted by the Helpful Content algorithm update.

What Will The Helpful Content Update Do To Websites?

Quite simply, the Helpful Content Update will likely negatively impact the rankings of the websites it reviews and finds not to be trustworthy or as helpful to answering a search query.

And that is also where the Helpful Content Update is unique compared to previous content updates on Google that penalize individual pages of content, as opposed to an entire website. Because of that domain level impact, penalties suffered as a result of the Helpful Content Update are going to more closely resemble other famously named updates like Panda or Medic.

Will the Helpful Content Update Hurt My Entire Website Or Just A Page?

While previous Google algorithm updates frequently only targeted specific pieces of content or pages within a site, it appears the Helpful Content Update will impact the ENTIRE website if it finds content on the domain to be unhelpful.

To combat this potentially devastating scenario, webmasters need to begin creating content on their websites that is unique, has authority, and is something they know well enough to be considered an expert.

I Have Done SEO – Will The Helpful Content Update Hurt My Website?

If you have followed proper SEO best practices, have built up your site’s authority within Google by offering unique, technically and factually sound information, and have properly stated who you are and why you are an expert on your subject – it is unlikely you will be impacted as much as websites that simply have pushed out spammy content with no real authority.

To learn more about how to build authority on your website, check out this clip below from our agency President, Justin Seibert.

What Do I Need To Do To Rank After The 2023 Helpful Content Update?

If you have been hit by the Helpful Content Update there is likely only one solution to regain your traffic and rankings you had prior to the algorithm update:

Build Authority.

The best way to rank your website and avoid all future algorithm updates is to become an expert in the eyes of Google. Below are three ways to future-proof your content from algorithm updates like this.

1. Begin writing content that answers search engine queries from users that is factually and technically sound and comes with an interesting viewpoint.
2. Your content needs to be 100% unique and not just a rehash of someone else’s material.
3. Your content also needs to explicitly state why you are considered a reliable source, including information on:
   1. who wrote the content on the site
   2. whether it has been peer-reviewed or approved in any way, and
   3. the credentials of the people who work on the website

Have You Been Hit By This Algorithm Update?

If your website has been hit by the Helpful Content Update and you have followed these steps – we would love to hear from you and understand your experience.

Please reach out so we can help diagnose your situation.

The post What Is The Google Helpful Content Update? appeared first on Direct Online Marketing.

Learn more about your new go-to Analytics platform – featuring insights and commentary straight from experts inside Google – in our upcoming webinar on July 14, 2022.

Maybe you’re someone who already has strong Google Analytics muscles, or you’re at least comfortable with the platform. Are you sure that there’s nothing you could possibly learn from DOM’s analytics experts?

Are you willing to bet your data on that? All of your data?

It’s not like the last few years. The moment the clock strikes midnight on July 1, 2023, your beloved Universal Analytics won’t work anymore. You’d better have your analytics ducks in a row or you’ll be staring at a whole new events-based data model.

If you just try to recreate everything in GA4 that you’ve come to expect from Universal Analytics, you’ll be missing out on a whole heaping helping of new ways to analyze about your website’s data.

Don’t you want to be ready? Don’t you want to know what you’re getting into?

From seasoned pro to analytics newbie, if you have a website or somebody up the org chart expects you to know how it works, you’d better be prepared.

Do you have a couple of hours to spend on a free Google Analytics 4 training webinar?

Can you afford not to?

If you just answered “yes” to the first question and “no” to the second, please click the banner below to get registered for our next webinar.

Regardless of whether or not you’ve already implemented GA4, are you ready to use it to provide your marketing team with meaningful insights?

You don’t have to dread the day when you need to use GA4 to get the same insights you’ve come to expect from Universal Google Analytics.

You need to invest in careful planning and strategy to get meaningful insights from your data. This upcoming webinar is the perfect starting point for you to reimagine your measurement strategy for digital campaigns.

Meet The Speakers For Our Google Analytics 4 Training Webinar:

Speaker: Dan Walsh
Agency Development Manager, Google

Dan is an Agency Development Manager at Google and focuses on supporting digital agencies and their clients to get the most out of the Google Ads ecosystem. With more than 15 years in the media industry across Fortune 500 companies as well as scrappy startups, Dan enjoys helping clients of all sizes to get the best out of their advertising investments.

Featured Analyst: Steve D’Angelo
Senior Digital Analyst, DOM

DOM Senior Digital Advertising Analyst Steve D’Angelo is certified in multiple disciplines of digital marketing and advertising from Google (including Google Analytics) and HubSpot. He has spent his entire career helping growing and enterprise companies in data-driven industries like healthcare, technology, and insurance create actionable measurement strategies so they can fully utilize their complex analytics setups.

Featured Analyst: Dana Schumacher
Senior Digital Analyst, DOM

DOM Senior Digital Analyst Dana Schumacher is a Google Analytics Qualified Individual who was one of the first hires at DOM specifically dedicated to campaign analysis. Prior to joining our team to help our clients grow their SEO and social media campaigns with greater confidence, Dana spent over a decade serving as an in-house analyst for publicly traded enterprises, eCommerce companies, and software development firms.

Speaker: Justin Seibert
President, DOM

DOM President and 20-year digital marketing veteran Justin Seibert started in the field in 2001 as a one-man digital marketing department for an LA-based firm; in 2006 he founded DOM and has grown it into a top 200 Premier Google Partner who’s worked with clients on every populated continent.

Ready To Sign Up
After Seeing The Speaker Lineup?
Click Here To Get Registered.

The post Begin Your Google Analytics 4 Training In Our Upcoming Webinar appeared first on Direct Online Marketing.

That’s right – you’ve got about three weeks (as of this posting) to get your search ads together.

Google claims that this change will be better for advertisers because, according to Google studies, Responsive Search Ads are a high performing alternative to Expanded Text Ads. It also means advertisers will have less control over their ads.

Let’s examine the pros and cons of this change below.

What Exactly Is Changing?

Google has announced that you will no longer be able to create or edit Expanded Text Ads within standard search campaigns after June 30, 2022.

So while you will no longer be able to create them:

1. Any Expanded Text Ads that you currently have running (or create before the deadline) will continue to serve.
2. You will also maintain the ability to pause and resume Expanded Text Ads.

This change to the platform doesn’t mean your existing ads will stop running. It simply means that Responsive Search Ads will, become the primary ad type available to advertisers in paid search campaigns.

Responsive Search Ads have been available for a few years now. Before this change, it was a best practice at DOM to create ad groups composed of:

• 1 Responsive Search Ad
• 3 Expanded Text Ads

According to internal Google data, “advertisers that switch from expanded text ads to responsive search ads, using the same assets, see an average of 7% more conversions at a similar cost per conversion.”

Emphasis above was added by us for effect.

According to the Google Ads management specialists here at DOM, Responsive Search Ads generally serve more frequently than Expanded Text Ads. Now this doesn’t necessarily mean that Responsive Search Ads always perform better, but it does mean that Google prefers to show Responsive Search Ads more.

Therefore, it is best to go with the flow and use the ad type that Google puts in front of people more frequently.

What Is an Expanded Text Ad (ETA) compared to a Responsive Search Ad (RSA)?

To users, these two search ad types look the same when encountered online:

It’s under the hood, on the advertiser’s end, that ETAs and RSAs differ.

Here’s the space you’ve got to work with for each ad type:

Expanded Text Ads

• 3 headlines
  • 30 characters max/headline
• 2 descriptions
  • 90 characters max/description

Responsive Search Ads

• 15 headlines
  • 30 characters max/headline
• 4 descriptions
  • 90 characters max/description

ETAs let you define 3 headlines and 2 descriptions, arranged in the order you choose.

RSAs let you define up to 15 headlines and 4 descriptions, which Google then takes and mixes & matches to create the specific combination of headlines and descriptions that appear in any given instance of your ad showing to a user.

Another differentiator with RSAs is the presence of the Ad Strength progress tracker.

This tracker helps you understand what other additions and features you need to include in your RSAs to maximize the likelihood of its visibility. For instance, if you were not using any ads extensions, this tool would tell you and provide you with some ideas on extensions to use.

Over time, Google’s machine learning algorithm will determine which ad combinations produce the best results for your campaign, and tailor your copy to achieve your desired results.

Pinning

Within RSAs, you can pin headlines and descriptions to a certain position. That is, you can instruct Google to show a line of text in only the position within the ad that you choose.

So if you have a headline that you always want out front & center in your ads, you can pin that headline to show only in position 1 for instance.

Same goes for your descriptions.

Pros and Cons of the End of Expanded Text Ads and the Rise of Responsive Search Ads

Con: Loss of Control

It will be harder to control what precise message users see in your ads.

The responsive nature of RSAs means that the Google algorithm will cycle through multiple headlines and descriptions to show in a given instance of your ad appearing on a SERP. You won’t know for certain what combination of text a user will be served.

Just for the sake of confirmation, it’s worth noting that this “loss of control” is specifically tailored to your ad variations and NOT the search queries you are targeting your ads to be shown for.

With ETAs, you control the singular message that your ad will always display. You write the 3 headlines and 2 descriptions, and you put them in the order you want; that’s how ETAs work.

It will be harder to A/B test the effectiveness of one message against another.

Because RTAs present a rotating combination of your headlines and descriptions, it won’t be possible to run a strict test of one ad message against another. ETAs, on the other hand, do allow for this kind of precise testing.

At DOM, we continually A/B test ad messages for our clients with ETAs. It’s a best practice of ours to disseminate well-performing messages across ads and campaigns; conversely, we swap out poor-performers and put in new messages to continue our testing.

Pro: Easier Account Management

Creating ad groups composed of a single RSA rather than multiple ETAs does make things easier in some ways.

You can spend less time creating ad groups.

Right off the bat, you only have to create one ad rather than a bunch to communicate many messages.

And you can consider adding suggestions straight from Google for more headlines and descriptions.

You can let Google do the A/B testing.

(If you’re feeling ambitious, even after June 2022 you can still A/B test one RSA against another. You’d need to provide each of the 2 RSAs a different set of headlines and descriptions, one set for the test group and one set for the control group. [And perhaps perform some prodigious pinning to make select elements static.])

If you don’t have the time to set up A/B tests of one ad against another, you can just let Google rotate through a bunch of messages and optimize your ad. The algorithm will optimize your RSA by trying to present the most enticing of your headlines and descriptions to each user, based on that user’s search history and what they’ve typed into the Google search bar.

What Does This Change To Responsive Search Ads Mean for You?

Simplified Account Management

If you don’t have the time, inclination, or people to run your own A/B tests of ad messaging, then RSAs are a boon. You can give Google some headlines and descriptions, and then sit back and relax while the algorithm tries to sort out what’s the best-performing ad copy.

Less Control

If you like to craft a precise message and deliver it to potential customers verbatim, RSAs are a bane. You’re going to have to put in more effort to present a consistent message; you’re going to have to dig into technical settings like pinning to make your ad more static.

Going with the Flow

Whether we like it or not, Google will continue to change the details of paid search advertising. Its nature is staying the same, however. At the end of the day, you still need to craft a message that compels your audience to take action. This upcoming (June 2022) adjustment by Google doesn’t change that fact.

So take the leap and embrace Responsive Search Ads. This is an ad type that Google is already favoring over Expanded Text Ads (as our experience at DOM shows us).

To get more information on this topic, check out Google’s documentation.

Here are a few more articles from the DOM blog about digital advertising that might interest you, too:

• Will AI Copywriting Replace Content Writers?
• Zero-click Searches and the Future of SEM
• How Online Marketing Helps Global Exporters Grow
• What Is a Call to Action? (Click Here to Find Out)

Unsure whether or not your campaigns are prepared for the expiration of expanded text ads? Contact us today for a free PPC consultation.

The post Google Responsive Search Ads (And Why They’re About To Be All You’ve Got) appeared first on Direct Online Marketing.

Recently, the majority of this chatter came because of a Google announcement heard around the digital world… that they planned to sunset Universal Analytics by July 2023.

The initial reaction to the news among marketers and website owners seemed to range from dread and apprehension to begrudging acceptance of a new way of life.

While Google had largely made it known that the transition to GA4 would likely happen in the not-so-distant future, presenting a hard deadline and conveying to users that historical data would not be maintained in Universal Analytics past a certain date represented a harsh wake-up call to reality for many. The debate about Google Analytics 4 vs. Universal Analytics has suddenly moved from a theoretical conversation to grudging acceptance.

Having to migrate a custom installation from Universal Analytics or setting up a brand new configuration represents an investment of time, money, and an acknowledgment of sunk costs into a system that is on its way to being deprecated.

But the switch to GA4 isn’t a negative change – far from it – as it represents a badly needed overhaul and presents a unique opportunity for businesses to gain a competitive advantage against direct competitors who are slow to adapt to GA4.

Why the Shift to GA4?

Universal Analytics is an amazingly popular tool that is used by just under 30 million websites. Despite this popularity, Universal Analytics (UA) is based on a data model that is over 20 years old and is in need of a hard reset.

New challenges such as privacy concerns over cookie usage, or maintaining accuracy of cross-device tracking have presented obstacles that have necessitated a data paradigm shift that can adapt with an evolving landscape. As a result, GA4 is not simply an enhancement to UA, but an entirely new product using a new data model.

Comparing Data Models In Google Analytics 4 vs Universal Analytics

GA4 uses an event-based data model, while Universal Analytics is a session-based model.

Arguably the biggest differences between UA and GA4 are the changes in the data model, which is the foundation that every previously deployed Google Analytics is built upon. Universal Analytics is a session-based data model. Within a session, UA collects and stores various interactions (called hits) that are grouped within these sessions. These sessions are the foundation of Universal Analytics reporting. 

Some examples of Universal Analytics hit types are: 

• Pageview
• Screenview
• Event
• Transaction
• Item
• Social
• Exception
• Timing

GA4’s event-based model processes each interaction/hit as a standalone event. Put simply, everything is now an event. Similar to how hits are grouped under Sessions in UA, event parameters are grouped under events in GA4 and serve as additional pieces of metadata to add context to the event data. 

Having these additional granular pieces of information can provide real benefits to your analytics. For example, it is very common for organizations to have countless forms, built using different tools, with different offers speaking to different parts of the funnel, scattered across your main site and subdomains.

Let’s say in this specific example, a SaaS client is using Contact Form 7, HubSpot Forms and Gravity Forms across their web properties for demo requests, free trials, newsletter signups and gated whitepaper downloads. We could pass the following custom event parameters for all form submission events (i.e, sign_up and generate_lead).

form_type: cf7, hubspot, gravity.

form_offer: demo, free trial, newsletter, whitepaper

form_id: passes the unique ID of each form so that you can map back to it in the tool it was built in.

This would allow the client to see which form types and/or offers are performing best and easily differentiate between the forms using a unique ID.

How Do You Measure Sessions In Google Analytics 4 vs Universal Analytics?

The concept of a session is a fundamental consideration in how we analyze user behavior. So even though GA4 has moved away from the session-driven model of UA, never fear, sessions themselves are still present and able to be analyzed in reports.

However, the method for how the sessions are calculated has changed.

The session_start automatic event is the new method for how sessions are calculated in GA4. The session_start event initiates when a user opens your website or app in the foreground, or views a page or screen when no session is currently active (e.g. the previous session has timed out).

A session can expire or timeout based on a period of inactivity. The default session timeout in GA4 is 30 minutes (the same as in UA), but can be adjusted up to 7 hours and 55 minutes.

Google measures inactivity based on the user_engagement automatic event. This event acts as a timer periodically sending events to GA4 as long as the site/app is in the foreground. So if a user_engagement event does not fire in the allotted duration set (default 30 minutes), the session times out.

Why The User Engagement Event In GA4 Is A Better Way To Measure Sessions

The user_engagement event further enriches session measurement by adding additional session-related metrics. Session related metrics include:

• Sessions: The number of sessions that began on your site or app (the session_start event was triggered).
• Engaged sessions: The number of sessions that lasted 10 seconds or longer, or had 1 or more conversion events or 2 or more page or screen views.
• Engaged sessions per user: The number of engaged sessions / the number of users
• Engagement rate: The ratio, represented as a percentage, of Engaged sessions relative to total sessions.

So while this shift in how sessions are calculated will certainly take some getting used to for marketers familiar with UA, from our perspective, this new model allows for new, useful, session related metrics that can provide more flexible and insightful behavioral analysis when compared to UA.

How GA4 Is Going To Enable Better Engagement Measurement

One of the biggest frustrations analysts have with Universal Analytics is the inability to measure engagement on a page. Bounce rate has long been the de facto stat for measuring engagement in UA. A bounce is when a user visits a single page and exits without navigating to a second page (bounce rate = bounces ÷ sessions).

However, there are plausible scenarios where users interact by only visiting a single page of your site. Although instead of that visit being a low or no value visit, the single page visit of your site actually  signals that visitors are finding exactly what they need right away. Situations like this could include reading a blog post or finding an answer on a frequently asked question page.

In these scenarios, many casual Universal Analytics users will use time-based metrics such as “Average Session Duration” for users who landed on that page. Unfortunately, Average Session Duration is one of the most misleading and misused metrics in UA, as many do not realize that UA can’t measure the time a user spent looking at the last page of their session.

So what you are actually viewing is the average session duration for sessions where the user visited multiple pages. The new engaged sessions metric helps fill this gap. As we can see, the pain behind a Google Analytics 4 vs. Universal Analytics conversation loses a little bit of its sting with the right implementation.

(Reference: Google’s documentation comparing Session in Google Analytics 4 vs. Universal Analytics: https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/9964640?hl=en#sessions&zippy=%2Cin-this-article
https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/11986666#sessions&zippy=%2Cin-this-article )

How Does Event Measurement Change in Google Analytics 4 vs Universal Analytics?

At this point, we have all grown accustomed to Universal Analytics’ event taxonomy of Event Category, Event Action and Event Label. While the structure is certainly a useful framework through which we have constructed our event naming conventions, it is somewhat rigid and has several drawbacks.

For example, we have a standard naming convention for measuring UA link click events that we use for the purpose of measuring several things.

• Event Category = “All Link Clicks”. The logic is to have a uniform name for all link clicks to keep reports clean and to easily be able to track unique link clicks on a given page.
• Event Action = {{cJS – Click Type}}. This is a custom JavaScript variable created in Google Tag Manager that returns whether the link click was Internal, Outbound, Click to Call, mailTo Click, or a PDF Download Click. This allows us to segment link clicks by user intent and to better understand user behavior.
• Event Label is {{cJS – Lowercase Click Text}}~{{Click URL}}. This combines the text of the link with the URL of the link so that we are able to differentiate between different links.

How GA4 Removes Event Taxonomy

As you can see from our example above, we are trying to implement workarounds to squeeze more information out of the event than the three standard event fields allow by concatenating multiple variables in the event label field. We could use hit-scoped custom dimensions to collect this data, but there is a limit of 20 custom dimensions per Google Analytics property built using UA, so custom dimensions have to be used sparingly in those installations. The ideal solution would be if we could add additional fields to the event as needed to collect the data–that is exactly what new GA4 property installs allow you to do.

GA4 totally removes UA’s event taxonomy. Event Category, Event Action and Event Label are no more, now the only standard field is Event Name. Additional event data can be collected via parameters; which are additional pieces of metadata that add context to events. Some parameters (e.g., language, page_title, page_location, page_referrer & screen_resolution) are sent automatically. In addition to automatically sent parameters, up to 25 custom parameters can be sent for each event.

When you consider the previous workarounds we had to utilize in my UA link click example, you can see one example of how the flexibility of GA4’s event-based model can, if properly configured, unlock more granular insights than its predecessor was ever capable of.

Types of Google Analytics 4 Events

There are four types of events in GA4:

1. Automatically collected events
2. Enhanced measurement events
3. Recommended events
4. Custom events

Automatically collected and Enhanced measurement events are what we would consider out of the box event tracking.

Automatically collected events

As the name suggests, these events are collected automatically when you set up your data stream for GA4 and are triggered by basic interactions with your site or app.

Here is a full list of GA4’s automatically collected events.

Enhanced Measurement events

Enhanced measurement events allow you to measure events right in GA4’s user interface. No Google Tag Manager configuration or coding required! Within the Admin section of GA4, you can enable any (we recommend all ) of the following events:

• Page views (page_view)
• Scrolls (scroll)
• Outbound clicks (click)
• Site searches (view_search_results)
• Video engagement (video_start, video_progress, video_complete)

You can read additional information related to GA4’s Enhanced measurement events here.

While out of the box event tracking (Automatically collected events and Enhanced measurement events) can fulfill basic needs, you must go further to get the most of your GA4 implementation. This can be accomplished via Recommended Events and Custom Events.

Recommended Events

Recommended events are events that you implement that are not easily configured out of the box. Because these events require additional context to be meaningful, they’re not sent automatically.

While the firing/trigger logic of the events need to be customized, they have names and parameters that are predefined by Google for the purpose of unlocking existing and future reporting capabilities. Adding these events are crucial for getting the most value of GA4 reports, helping you better understand user behavior.

An example of a recommended event would be sign_up, set to be triggered when a user signs up for an offer. You can then use GA4 reports to analyze which user sign-up methods are the most popular or convert the best.

Here is a full list of GA4 Recommended events.

Custom Events

Finally, custom events act as a sort of catch-all. Meaning if an event you have identified as valuable is not captured by any of the three other event types, it must require a custom implementation.

Why Google Analytics 4’s Data Model is Superior To Universal Analytics

It is clear that Google designed GA4 to be a more customizable future-proof tool than its predecessor. By moving to the event-based collection, Analytics is more flexible, scalable, and customizable.

The event-based model allows for all hits to be stored as a single data type. This is a welcome shift for analysts who have longed for improved granularity and have used workarounds (via hit-scoped custom dimensions) to segment and analyze data on a hit-by-hit basis. This constant and granular measurement of interactions across web streams provide you with even richer insights from your data.

Implement a Customized Measurement Strategy

Look beyond platform defaults. GA4 out of the box is actually a much more robust solution than UA. As we previously discussed, enhanced measurement allows for default recommended events to be added, while UA requires events to be configured using Google Tag Manager or with the help of a developer. Despite this, in any comparison of Google Analytics 4 vs Universal Analytics, GA4 still does not cater to the unique needs of every website.

Every business and every website are unique, meaning that every analytics implementation must be unique as well. To implement analytics in a way that is tailored to your business’s unique needs, custom events, custom dimensions and custom metrics are a necessity.

Out of the box measurement is a good place to start, but you must invest time in customizing your analytics implementation to get the insights that your business needs.

Contact DOM today for a free measurement strategy session for implementing GA4.

The post Google Analytics 4 vs Universal Analytics appeared first on Direct Online Marketing.

Simply put: it’s not easy to be in charge of kickstarting growth for treatment facilities and rehabilitation centers.

Scammers and third-party lead generators have increased the difficulty for organizations to rank their websites to be found by the 23-million-plus Americans in need of treatment. 

But the biggest Google change challenging SEO efforts for treatment facilities and rehabs isn’t the scammers…

Instead, it’s the government. 

Learn how the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) has been impacting your ability to rank at the top of the search results. Then, get a glimpse into 12 of our top ideas to rise above SAMHSA in the search engines so you can get your growth plans off the ground.  

SAMHSA’s Impact on Digital Marketing for Addiction and Mental Health

Back in February 2018, Google rolled out a significant change to how it presents search results in the United States when users look for services and information related to substance abuse and mental health.

That change? The placement of the National Helpline page provided by SAMHSA as one of the top three search results for high volume keywords like:

• “anxiety symptoms” — 77,500 monthly searches*
• “drug addiction” — 22,200 monthly searches*
• “signs of alcoholism” — 18,100 monthly searches*

The rise in the ranking presence of this page was exponential. According to data from SEMrush, its presence in the top 10 of Google results increased by over 1,100% in just the first month.

But that was just the beginning. Today, many of those same searches continue to show the SAMHSA National Helpline, and the number continues to grow.

For instance, as of August 2020, you can now find it listed on the first page of Google for over 89,000 terms. As a result, traffic estimates to the site have also grown by enormous leaps and bounds.

If you are responsible for confidently growing admission applications at a substance abuse or mental health facility, this change has forced you to rethink a few of your tactics. The good news is that rehab facilities like yours can respond and succeed despite this.

Get started with the extensive list we’ve created for you below.

Below, you will find 12 alternative marketing tactics – three using PPC strategies, and 9 using SEO strategies – that you can leverage quickly to compensate for SAMHSA’s ownership over the most clicked-through keyword positions in the search engines.

Our 12 Top Addiction Treatment Marketing Tactics

PPC And Digital Advertising Tactics

1. Go ‘Legit’ to Run Search Ads
2. Advertise On The ‘No. 2 Search Engine’
3. Strategically Stay Top Of Mind On The ‘GDN’

SEO And Content Marketing Tactics

1. Get Listed in SAMHSA’s Locator
2. Create Content For Every SERP Feature
3. Market The Map With Local SEO
4. Explore New Markets With Hyperlocal Pages
5. Review Your Past (Optimize It For The Future)
6. Capitalize On Question-Based Searches
7. Expand Upon Your Program Features
8. Blog For Your Decision-Making Audience
9. Barnacle To Top Content Publishers

1. Go ‘Legit’ and Get Approved to Run Ads In Search Engines

For a long time, Google and Bing accepted search engine advertising from rehab and mental health facilities in the same way they accepted ads from other medical service and healthcare providers. But, as the opioid crisis in the United States continued to escalate, the rules for addiction treatment centers started to change. 

Why? Because scammers started taking advantage of those in need.

To help separate the scammers from the legitimate treatment facilities, Google partnered with LegitScript to setup an independent, third-party verification system. Since then, any in-person treatment facility, crisis hotline, or support group has been required to be LegitScript certified to advertise in Google. You can learn more about the LegitScript certification process from our friends at FHE Health, a healthcare institution that delivers quality, medically integrated personalized treatment for those suffering from behavioral health disorders located in Deerfield Beach, FL.

Why LegitScript Certification For Search Ads Became A Need

In case you missed it, here’s a timeline of how the bans and reinstatements of rehab facility advertising in search engines progressed:

• September 2017: Google began restricting ads from showing for searches related to addiction treatment after it noticed that some facilities running ads did not provide a high enough quality of care to help patients recover.
• January 2018: Google followed suit in the UK as well and eventually Google extended the ban globally.
• April 2018: Google announced its partnership with LegitScript. By July, LegitScript planned to verify about 30 facilities and Google would once again reopen advertising to in-person facilities, crisis hotlines, and support groups.
• February 2019: Bing announced it would also require LegitScript certification for all addiction treatment advertisers and would no longer accept third-party lead generators. 

To be fair, there’s no doubt that running PPC campaigns in substance abuse and mental health niches is a costly marketing strategy. In addition to your monthly PPC marketing budget and associated agency fees, LegitScript requires an application fee per facility and an annual fee for verification.

With that said, search engine advertising is likely to be an ROI-positive endeavor if managed correctly. It’s also the only 100% viable option for getting a top page position for a keyword currently occupied by SAMHSA.

Plus, LegitScript certification keeps a lot of the less ethical facilities and scammers from competing for clicks and driving the costs per click higher.

Similar to becoming a listed facility in the Behavioral Health Treatment Services Locator from SAMHSA (more on that below), getting your facility listed will take some time, but the process is pretty simple.

If you are a representative of a facility interested in starting a LegitScript application, you can click here to submit one.

2. Advertise On YouTube, The Internet’s ‘No. 2 Search Engine’ 

If you clicked here, you were expecting this to be all about advertising on Bing, weren’t you? Or maybe one of the search engines that’s popular in international markets, like Baidu or Yandex?

Well, it’s not. Instead, you need to take a moment and think about leveraging the search opportunities provided by advertising on YouTube. A site that generates more searches on its platform than Bing, Yahoo!, AOL, and Ask.com… COMBINED.

Added bonus: it’s also widely considered to be the no. 2 social network, making it a great place to boost your social media marketing.

While it’s not a traditional “search engine” in the way you might normally think about them, there are nearly 3 BILLION searches per month done on the site, according to data compiled by Mushroom Networks. 

That breaks down to over 1,100 searches per second. 

Although it was acquired by Google back in 2006, LegitScript certification is not required at this time to advertise on YouTube. Therefore, it can be a more attractive advertising solution for smaller facilities with cost barriers to traditional search marketing on Google and Bing.

4 YouTube Advertising Tips To Maximize The Performance Of Your Videos

While LegitScript certification isn’t required, you’re still going to need to have a commercial or video ad ready to go for a YouTube promotion. Once you have your creative completed, here are a few ideas on how to get the best performance from a YouTube campaign.

• Use the appropriate format. Here’s a quick list of which type of YouTube ad is best for your campaign, based on your goals.
  • Brand recognition: 6-second bumpers.
  • Clicks: 15-20 second pre-roll ads (bonus: they can’t be skipped).
  • Conversions: 15-20 second pre-roll ads
  • Re-purposing a TV commercial: 30-second In-Stream ads.
• Utilize closed captioning. Provide the best user experience for your viewers with accurate, verbatim transcriptions.
• Target smartly. Find your audience using the options for gender, parental status, interests, or target specific channels they are likely to watch.
• Deploy an end card. You’ve made some great content, now reinforce your brand and inspire the viewer to take their next action by directing your viewers to their next destination – a landing page, your website, or your YouTube channel page.

There are definitely some benefits YouTube can bring to your marketing efforts with a dedicated advertising budget.

In addition, leveraging YouTube can also bring benefits to your traffic and visibility through SEO and referral traffic. Interested in learning how it can help you in these areas? Check out one of these helpful links.

• How We Grew YouTube Traffic 6,800% For This Retailer
• Video Hosting: YouTube or Vimeo?
• 6 YouTube Tips To Improve Your Results

3. Strategically Stay Top Of Mind On Google’s Display Network

According to Google, its far-reaching Display Network reaches 90% of Internet users around the world. 

Websites. Blogs. News sites. Even Google-owned properties like Gmail and YouTube.

All of them have an advertising opportunity available to your facility through the Google Display Network.

Depending on the business goals you have for your campaign, Google can also manage the campaign for you on autopilot. Just set your budget, upload your ads, and off you go!

But just because it sounds easy, however, doesn’t mean it’s that simple. Sure, automated bidding is handy, but it’s only as useful as the strategy you put behind it. Similar to YouTube advertising and LegitScript approved PPC advertising, you’re going to want to pay a lot of attention to your targeting if you want a display campaign that will lead to conversions. 

Oh, and you’re going to want to keep your ads fresh. You ever get tired of seeing the same ads from leading brands over and over? If you answered yes, then you can assume your audiences will too. Don’t bore them to death with your creative.

With the Google Display Network, you can proceed with confidence. Just be aware that patience and persistence are going to be key in this channel if you want it to pay off. 

THIS TREATMENT CENTER
IMPROVED THEIR ADMITS BY 300%
USING DIGITAL ADS. LEARN HOW.

4. Getting Listed in SAMHSA’s Behavioral Health Treatment Services Locator

One of my favorite online marketing strategies comes from the adage, “…if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em.” From some of our research into how Google presents this SERP listing for SAMHSA, the link for the National Helpline will often include a site link to SAMHSA’s Behavioral Health Treatment Services Locator right underneath its meta description.

The fact is that Google favors displaying links from SAMHSA over other possible search results prominently, so getting your original content or sales-driven pages to rank above SAMHSA will be extremely difficult — almost near impossible.

However, SAMHSA has an online treatment finder, and rehab facilities can request to be added to that list of treatment providers.

How To Get Listed In The SAMHSA Behavioral Health Treatment Services Locator

Getting listed in the SAMHSA services locator is a great SEO tactic for your campaign. For starters, you’re gaining a backlink from a .gov domain — one of the highest-value links you can obtain.

Need a reason beyond that? The site generates an estimated 60,000+ visits per month in the United States from Google searches alone. The high volume and highly specific type of people visiting the site and then being referred to your facility create a great source of well-qualified traffic for your site.

If you represent a newer facility, or your facility is not currently listed in SAMHSA’s locator, getting listed will take some time. Overall, though, the process is pretty simple. Here’s how it works according to the FAQ on the locator’s website:

1. You request the addition of your facility by completing the I-BHS Facility Application Form.
2. The BHSIS Project Office verifies that your facility is eligible by contacting your local representatives or SAMHSA/CBHSQ. As an alternative, you can also contact your state mental health or substance abuse agency to help with verification.
3. You receive a survey in the mail from I-BHS, complete it, and return.
4. About a month passes, and pending final approval, your facility should be good to go. Just know that they typically add new facilities on a monthly basis.

To maintain your listing, you are required to respond annually to either:

• the National Survey of Substance Abuse Treatment Services (N-SSATS), or
• the National Mental Health Services Survey (N-MHSS)

These surveys go out every March, and your facility will be required to provide updated information each year after your facility was added to the list.

5. Create Content For Every SERP Feature

If you have spent time doing searches on Google and Bing for answers to almost any question, or for information on any general topic, then you have probably been served with a featured snippet result in the past.

What’s a featured snippet? According to Google, it’s that special box at the top of the search result before the standard listings. Featured snippets include:

• a quoted block of text from a webpage in paragraph, list, or table format
• a link to the webpage the text was originally quoted from

The content is also frequently read aloud by the Google Assistant if you do a voice search. 

While that is the general description of a featured snippet straight from Google, they are just one of many top-position-snatching Google features. Google search engine results page features (SERP features) can take many different forms and shapes. In fact, according to SEMrush, there are over 20 different SERP features to keep in mind if you are using SEO as a growth strategy for your facility. 

While some of the features SEMrush monitors will not have a direct impact on an addiction treatment or mental health campaign, many of them will.

12 Actionable Ideas You Can Use To Put SERP Features To Work

6 Ideas That Are Completely Within Your Control

• Local Pack: verify your GoogleMyBusiness listing and get citations on as many of the major local directories as possible (more on this in tip no. 6) 
• Site Links: add links to your top resources and services pages in the footer of your website.
• Top Stories: Have your blog added to Google News. 
• Knowledge Panel: if your facility has a Wikipedia page, or if one of your executives is a published author, one of these may be available for you to claim. 
• Reviews: deploy schema markup in your site header files with star ratings and review counts from sources like the National Rehabs Directory, the fix, ChooseHelp, or Rehab.com.
• Twitter: publish your most valuable blog content and resources in your Twitter feed using keyword-rich hashtags at the end of each tweet. 

6 Ideas You Can Influence (But Google Controls)

• Featured Snippets: if you have a page that ranks in the top 5 of a search term with a featured snippet at the top, create a subheading that includes the keyword, then publish content that matches the featured snippet type, using the keyword phrase 2-3 times in your text. 
• People Also Ask and FAQ: answer the questions Google showcases in the People Also Ask box in an FAQ section on a top traffic page. 
• Image Pack and Image: optimize the file size and dimensions of your image files and utilize up to 100 characters of your alt tag for keyword-rich descriptions. 
• Featured Videos, Video Carousel, and Video: embed your YouTube videos on pages of your site that also rank well for terms with video carousels. 
• Instant Answer: provide calculations and short, simple to answer questions on your top-performing webpages. 
• Jobs: deploy schema markup in your site header files for the pages featuring any of your open job listings. Note that this only applies if you are hosting your job openings on your site. Platforms like Glassdoor and Indeed already do this for you.

6. Leverage Local SEO To Rank Where SAMHSA Can’t Be Featured

While SAMHSA will continue to dominate organic search results, they technically only have one physical location in Rockville, Maryland. As far as Google is concerned, SAMHSA can’t be featured in local SEO search results because they are not considered to be a provider of local treatment services. SAMHSA will always be your biggest competitor for traffic in the search engines, but one area Google is leaving open for you to own continues to be local SEO.

On desktop searches, a map listing with three facilities is included with nearly every top searched keyword phrase related to substance abuse and mental health services.

On mobile devices, the map takes over all of the SERP real estate above the fold. At a bare minimum, if you have not taken over ownership of your Google My Business listing, or verified your business with the following top local directories, opportunity is leaving you behind:

• Apple Maps
• Bing Local
• SAMHSA
• Yelp

If you already have your business confirmed on all five of the platforms listed above, you are off to a great start with maximizing your online presence in your local area. But you’ll want to take it further with local SEO as there are still as many as 22 other local directories we deem to have a “high” or “very high” citation value.

Because of the presence of the SAMHSA listing at the top of the search results, the fact that you want to reach your target audience on a local or national level will not matter – you’re going to want to leverage every ounce of opportunity local SEO has to offer. Don’t get left behind — local SEO needs to be a critical part of your drug rehab SEO strategy.

7. Go Hyperlocal

There are a lot of well-established websites in the substance abuse and mental health niche that have leveraged hyperlocal keyword searches very effectively over the years for their own addiction treatment marketing.

In fact, many of the most highly trafficked sites in this niche leverage creating a directory of treatment facilities and drug rehab centers as one of their main marketing tools to drive referrals to advertisers. Sites like SoberNation and Rehabs.com have done this for years and become so successful with this as a marketing strategy that they can now get you to pay them for traffic.

Because of how well sites like this perform in the SERPs, these types of directories can be a good source of both relevant referral traffic as well as qualified admissions leads. It can be tough to justify paying to be listed in a directory, but that doesn’t mean you should ignore these opportunities entirely.

Think of it this way — if you can justify paying to be part of your local chamber of commerce, you could probably justify paying to be listed in a directory that can help grow your admissions. Outside of becoming listed in rehab focused directories, you can also apply a hyperlocal approach to your website. If you know zip codes, names of popular suburban areas, or names of specific cities and towns within a dedicated drive radius of your facility, then you can leverage localized content to rank for some highly targeted long-tail keyword searches.

Want to go into more depth on hyperlocal digital marketing? Here’s a few blog posts worth your click. 

• What is Hyperlocal SEO and Why Should I Be Doing it Right Now?
• How You Can Use Hyperlocal Ad Campaigns

8. Revise Your Past (Then Optimize It For Your Future) In Addiction Treatment Marketing

Historical optimization is the practice of updating old content on your site and improving its SEO value for the present and future. Over the past few years, this tactic has become an incredibly valuable SEO play for facilities with a large archive of content.

To briefly summarize this tactic, find a blog post or article on your site that was published at least six months ago. Prioritize pages on your site that either:

1. Generate a lot of traffic, or
2. Convert into admission inquiries

Then refresh the content, improve the on-page SEO, add an author bio, and re-publish it with a more recent “updated” date.

Search engines reward webpages they can rely on being “there” when the crawl the internet. This tactic presents your facility with the opportunity to avoid writing about the same topics over and over again. Instead, it helps your website establish cornerstone pieces of content that will reliably provide your site with traffic from search engines. 

As an added bonus, historical optimization can help you establish your administrators and clinicians as thought leaders in the addiction and behavioral health industry.

Historical optimization in your addiction treatment marketing is a great way to get long term value out of content you published long ago.

9. Take Advantage of Question-Based Queries In Your Addiction Treatment Marketing

According to research compiled by Jumpshot and analyzed by Moz in March 2017, roughly 8% of Google searches are phrased as questions. With voice search only continuing to rise in popularity, the percentage of question-based searches are sure to grow accordingly.

Do you have an FAQ page on your facility’s website?

When you publish blog content, are you writing titles and subheadings in your posts in the form of a question? Take the time to answer both common and uncommon questions. Try to compile questions you may often get from admission prospects and their families about your treatment approaches, facilities, or warning signs that a loved one needs to know. There are two major benefits to taking this approach with your addiction treatment marketing strategy:

1. You will be building trust and helping inform people who need help but are not ready to call.
2. Your site will benefit from a larger number of entry points from keyword searches, lessening the impact that SAMHSA’s top positioning will take away from search traffic to your facility.

What questions are your admissions team, or your clinical staffers, uniquely qualified to answer? Give them a laptop and have them start writing!

10. Don’t Forget About Your Program Features In Your Addiction Treatment Marketing

Of the over 89,000+ keyword phrases where Google displays the SAMHSA National Helpline link in the top three results, above you will see just a small sample of the monetary worth of some of the terms, sorted by top monthly search volume estimates.* That’s a very small sampling of the data SEMrush has on rankings for the National Helpline page, but with a pretty quick glance, you will notice some trends across the keywords that Google is using to trigger this result.

• Different forms of addiction
• Someone researching reactions to substance abuse (withdrawal, side effects, etc.)
• Someone is looking to find/get help (AA, NA, rehab, etc.)

Now, in contrast to that, you may have noticed that keywords related to general program features were not in the above example. These days, no substance abuse or mental health facility is the same. Dig in to communicate what makes the approach of your recovery centers unique from other facilities.

3 Questions You Should Think About Answering In Your Content Marketing Plan For Your Rehabilitation Center

• Does your program take a mindfulness approach to relapse prevention?
• Do you leverage the outdoors as a therapy method?
• Does your staff have multiple advanced certifications or education credentials?

Whatever makes your facility stand out from the rest of the facilities out there, now is the time to capitalize on it. Make sure your site has dedicated pages related to those treatment programs and features and support those dedicated pages with press releases or blog post content. Optimize the dedicated pages for maximum search visibility by applying on-page SEO best practices and leverage link building strategies from the supporting content to heighten the importance of the dedicated pages to search engines.

With this addiction treatment marketing tactic, every page on your website can be an entry point to put you in touch with those in need of help.

11. Addiction Treatment Marketing Should Cater Content to Your Audience

In response to these developments in Google search results, a lot of digital marketing agencies are going to suggest you try to leverage content marketing strategies only with the intention of generating interest from top-tier publishers. The idea here is that getting coverage in front of a national audience should generate backlinks and a lot of impressions. The concept can also be referred to as viral marketing — because “going viral” is super easy, right?

To us, this feels like an expensive fool’s errand; unless, of course, the idea of a campaign with a large expense and little to no attributable ROI sounds like something your facility wants to try out.

Addiction treatment marketing shouldn’t be about more awareness of your facility. Instead, it should be about connecting with people who love and care for those who need your help.

5 Content Ideas To Help Establish A Better Connection With Those Who Need Your Help

Going with a “10X content” approach that will have an impact on the attention your brand receives and little else, the more sensible approach is to cater your content directly to your audience. Here are several alternatives to making “viral” content that could be better suited to get your facility highly-relevant traffic:

• Answering questions for the family members of potential admits
• Recapping research conducted in the industry that validates your approach to healing
• Sharing video testimonials from alumni who have dramatically improved their lives after release
• Providing helpful guides on niche topics related to attending a treatment facility, such as a legal term glossary
• Reviewing national and international news topics and explaining how they are directly impacting addiction and mental health treatment

For all types of people, it’s tough dealing with substance abuse and mental health. If you seek to be a resource for people by providing useful information at the right time, they will reach out when they need you the most. Don’t rely on occasional brand mentions in big publications with the hopes that people will remember you when the time is right.

12. Barnacle Your Brand To Top Ranking Content Publishers

Barnacle SEO is not a new strategy, but it can be a highly successful approach when situations like this occur. The term was coined by Will Scott of Search Influence about a decade ago and there was a must-watch Whiteboard Friday about it several years ago, too.

The idea behind Barnacle SEO for rehab centers as an addiction treatment marketing tactic is pretty straightforward – leverage the top rankings of other sites for your gain. Ever since April 2018, ranking for the top keywords in the substance abuse and mental health space became exponentially harder due to the update of SAMHSA’s National Helpline. Now, in addition to competing with other facilities and online publishers for top keyword rankings, getting them is almost impossible because of the injection of SAMHSA.

What can you do? Create content specifically on other sites that rank for your targeted keywords. Five of our favorite target domains to leverage for this strategy include:

• Medium
• Pinterest
• Quora
• Wikipedia
• YouTube

The value of links from these domains to help boost your search rankings is debatable. However, the referral traffic opportunity from all of them is great, and the frequency with which content on these sites ranks on the first page of Google results is high. While getting a Wikipedia page about your facility may be difficult, creating a profile and submitting content to all of these platforms should become a high priority online marketing strategy this year.

Closing Thoughts On Addiction Treatment Marketing Strategies

Many people are turning to Google to find answers to their troubles. With locations in Wheeling, WV, and Pittsburgh, PA, the team at DOM is well aware of the US’s opioid crisis. We are also sensitive to the fact that there is no “one size fits all” fix.

We think it’s a good thing that Google is trying to get people help when they need it from a neutral source. This is also not unfamiliar territory for Google. Back in November 2016, they made a similar change to the top of results for searches related to suicide.

But this change over the last two years does force substance abuse and mental health treatment facilities to shift. They can still use search engine marketing strategies to create opportunities for themselves. 

They just need to get more creative in order to provide care to the nearly 23 million Americans in need.

The top 12 ways we suggest facilities shift their addiction treatment marketing strategies are:

1. Become a LegitScript certified advertiser so your facility can run Google Ads and Microsoft Advertising
2. Extend the reach of your commercials and video content with YouTube advertising
3. Strategically tap into the near-limitless advertising opportunities in the Google Display Network 
4. Get listed in the SAMHSA Behavioral Health Treatment Services Locator
5. Find keywords you already rank well for and structure your content for Featured Snippets
6. Maximize visibility in local SEO by completing and verifying any available citations
7. Create content on your site dedicated to hyperlocal communities that are in need of your services
8. Keep top-performing pages up to date by adding more text and updating visual content every three to six months 
9. Invest time in creating a comprehensive FAQ or writing blog posts to answer common questions
10. Optimize pages on your site for rankings around the unique features of your programs
11. Create content tailored to the families and individuals struggling with these issues
12. “Barnacle” content published by your facility to top publishing platforms for better exposure

Want to check out more of our actionable ideas from our Pittsburgh marketing firm to grow confidently online in the medical and health industry? Check out some of these blog posts below.

• Google Medic: How to SEO Proof Your Site in the Trust Authority Era
• How Do People Find Answers To Health Related Questions?
• How To Optimize Your Hospital for Local Search
• Healthcare Marketing Research & Survey Results

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.

The post 12 Marketing Plans For Your Rehab Center To Kickstart Its Growth (Updated March 2022) appeared first on Direct Online Marketing.

Google does not stand still for very long. Just when you think you have a handle on everything you can get from the Alphabet-owned search giant, they put out something brand new that you, as a good digital marketing professional, feel like you should know about. One of those things may be Google Analytics 360.

When you’ve been around as long as DOM, you learn to keep your eyes open and your ears to the ground. You never know what new tools you absolutely must start using in order to keep up with your competitors.

Luckily, we’re here to help you figure out when you absolutely should be using some fancy tool Google whips up (like this example, for example) and when you can safely go about your business of doing business. We’ll just tell you straight out of the gate: you do not have to start using Google 360 to keep up with your competitors. Note that we might have a different suggestion if you can easily afford the $125,000 yearly cost for these fancy tools.

No, we didn’t add an extra zero to make our point; that’s how much it is. And if that’s not enough to turn you away, then you have more money in your marketing budget than most. Great! There are plenty of guides that can tell you what to do with Google 360. That’s not what this post is.

We’re going to give you some reasons why you can happily and, with a clear conscience, go about your merry way without Google 360.

Google Marketing Platform – More Than Just Google Analytics 360

While Google still uses the nomenclature of 360 (Display & Video 360, Analytics 360, Surveys 360, etc.), it rolled them all together with its Doubleclick acquisition into a premium version of the Google Marketing Platform. When you see somebody mention a specific piece of the Premium GMP, like Tag Manager 360, it is easier to see it as just one arm of the Premium GMP octopus.

What am I paying for with Google Marketing Platform?

Great question! When you get GMP, you are buying access to the following tools which are unavailable to mere mortals:

• Display & Video 360
• Analytics 360
• Surveys 360
• Search Ads 360
• Tag Manager 360
• Optimize 360

You also get integration to tools that are available to mere mortals, like Google Data Studio. If you look at the above list and say to yourself “I can get all of these for free except without the number 360 after it,” then congratulations! You’ve unlocked the first and, as we told you above, the most pressing matter of all.

That said, it’s not like these tools are completely created equal. For instance, Google Analytics 360 has a smaller time window for data freshness (4 hours max versus 24+ hours), a 99.9% Data Collection S.L.A., and custom unsampled tables to help make your data less reliant on machine learning models.

Premium GMP is nothing you haven’t seen before or don’t have access to already, it’s simply souped-up versions of those products. The GMP you know and love is still there, with all of the free tools you’ve come to love.

How is Google Marketing Platform different?

When we say “souped-up,” that’s exactly what these products are: suped-up, as in super-duper.

For example, Google Analytics 360 will give you access to premium products like:

• Advanced analysis
• Unsampled reports
• Google BigQuery export
• Data-driven attribution

It also provides more detailed funnel and attribution information. With Google Search Ads 360, you can track pretty much every platform there is, using Floodlight and the good old reliable Doubleclick cookie. Speaking of Doubleclick, Google has rolled the old DoubleClick Bid Manager into Display & Video 360, “a single, integrated tool that helps creative, data, and media teams work together to execute end-to-end campaigns.”

In other words, Google 360 is more of what you need, but more than more, and definitely more than most.

What does it all mean?

Like we said before we started down this path: you don’t need Google 360.

Most companies are absolutely, totally fine just using the free products that Google already offers its customers. Don’t misunderstand the bottom line, though: the advanced tools provided by the 360 versions are definitely worth the money!

If you have that princely sum to spend on these premium digital marketing tools, then your brand is enterprise level enough to make the purchase worth the price. For the rest of us, Google Marketing Platform is all we’ll ever need.

Having trouble trying to determine the best Google Analytics solution for your business? Contact us today to schedule a strategy session with one of our analytics consultants or learn more about our status as a Premier Google Partner before you reach out.

The post What is Google Analytics 360 and What Can the Data Do For You? (Updated 2022) appeared first on Direct Online Marketing.