In last week's episode, we asked whether SEO was still relevant in 2022. The short answer was yes. As promised at the end of last week's podcast, we have continued the discussion. SEO strategies and trends are often dictated by the current state of Google search, and Google has changed greatly over the years. These changes have been driven partially by weeding out spam content, but also by the emergence of new devices and competitors. Competition fuels Google's need to maintain its status as...

SEO was the biggest topic in the early days of digital marketing. It existed before Google Ads (formerly Google Adwords) was first introduced and co-existed with PPC for many years. As is true with everything, we can expect continuous changes in regard to SEO, and much has changed since the nineties. The types of devices people are searching on have grown to include everything from phones to TVs. Search is becoming local to devices, meaning people have access to native search features...

There is no longer talk of a pending recession - the recession has arrived. With its arrival, it brought about hiring freezes, layoffs, rising interest rates, and companies attempting to minimize their overhead. As more and more companies become reactive to the situation, it is clear this will have an impact on the marketing industry and the marketers that make it up. As companies lay off talent, hiring would become easier if it were not for the economic raincloud over the country. Companies...

There is an evergreen rule in SEO: Content is king. With Google's Helpful Content algorithm update, this is truer than ever. In the early days of search engines, the exploitation of simple algorithms was the driving factor behind spammy results. These dark times were ended by Google's commitment to making sure the most useful content would be returned to those searching on its platform. The 2012 Penguin algorithm update was a turning point in the battle against black hat SEO tactics. It...

The Journalism Competition and Preservation Act (S.673) aims to create a model of monetization for publishers for when their content is taken by search engines. Recently, the Amy Klobuchar sponsored senate bill has been making headlines again after recent revisions. While the bill covers print, broadcast, and digital news companies, as a digital marketing agency we have our attention on how this will affect search results and digital advertising. Google and other search engines, as well as...

Aside from on its App Store, Apple has not offered advertising on its platforms and products. This could change: leading up to Apple's big event on September 7th, rumors have leaked indicating Apple is about to launch advertising within their other applications. Intentional or not, their fight against third-party data has had significant impacts on advertising and analytics platforms including Facebook and Google. Apple has hired some of the top search and advertising platform talent...

RFP or "Request for Proposal" is a process where companies or organizations open requests for bids to complete a project. This practice is not new, and like many old ideas, the RFP process may not work for everyone. When a project has a finite result, like the construction of a new building, using an RFP process makes perfect sense. However, an RFP will do little to qualify potential candidates when your project requires or could benefit from creative and critical thinking. This begs the...

In last week's episode, we discussed how digital advertising platforms such as Google Ads are already implementing and relying on machine learning. The reach of AI in digital marketing does not stop with ads. As companies reluctantly become less dependent on third-party data, they are turning to machine learning to fill the data void. AI can help us perceive visitor behaviors and interests clearer without breaching privacy expectations. Pioneering uncharted frontiers has historically brought...

The Matrix, The Terminator, and Google Ads have one thing in common: AI that can both help and harm you depending on the situation. Many advertising platforms in recent years have become more aggressive regarding automatic recommendations powered by machine learning. These suggestions ideally should help your campaigns, but in most instances they don't. Smaller suggestions can be effective: platforms might tell you to remove an underperforming keyword or remove a negative keyword that...

Google is indisputably one of the best options for online advertising. With billions of monthly searches, it is an invaluable tool in our arsenal to help clients reach their potential customers. The amount of marketing data they currently have (and continue to collect) allows for fantastic targeting. While search ads work well for most, they're not the correct choice for every scenario. Despite how well Google works for advertisers, for many years we’ve wished competition would emerge. Our...

We are a data-driven agency. As such, we believe that all data, good and bad, must be reported on. More importantly, we believe that reporting needs to be actionable (as we discussed in episode 33). In our experience, too many agencies serve their clients fluff reports where all graphs are up and to the right. While it is important and satisfying to measure what has gone well, it is often more effective to identify areas of poor performance. This allows your agency to tell a complete story of...

With the pending recession of 2022 right around the corner, now is the time to think about your marketing campaigns and where your money is going. Many companies run fluff campaigns that produce nothing quantifiable; it is essential to actively collect data that is accurate & current to combat waste. This data will be the foundation on which you can make decisions going forward. It's a great time to review your data, determine which campaigns are unnecessary, and decide whether it makes...

In advertising days of yore, marketing and sales teams didn't play well together, data wasn't actionable, and the systems to store customers' data were hardly more efficient than an address book. Over time, the simple databases used to collect and retain prospect and client data evolved into what we know today as customer relationship management (CRM) systems. As CRM systems matured, the relationships between data did as well. Features that enabled leads to be associated with companies,...

All digital marketers agree that data collection is critical to measuring the success of any marketing effort. Data from your ad campaigns, SEO efforts, and traffic from your website visitors will help you better understand what's going on. If this is where you stop, you are missing a big opportunity to use your data to make impactful improvements. The purpose of collecting data should be to tell a story about the results of your efforts. This story should be used to make your data...

These days, everyone is trying to collect as much data as possible. User privacy efforts have shaken the marketing world, and the dust surrounding the impacts this will have on regulations for data collection has yet to settle. While it's clear that more data than ever is being collected, many companies do not quite understand how to use that data. Reporting on high-level metrics is useful, but many are missing the opportunity to reveal insights through actionable reporting. Before taking...

Bidding on your competitor's brand keywords can have benefits, though it can also create turmoil. One of the issues that could arise is that, if they notice, competitors could retaliate by bidding on your brand's keywords. This poses an interesting question, should you bid on your own brand's keywords? The challenge in answering this question is that not all situations are the same. Deciding if this strategy is right for you requires some analysis of your ad budget, competitors' campaigns,...

Most of our clients at Market Vantage offer products or services that are considered 'highly considered purchases'. This creates the need for prospecting and advertising that is different than for companies that thrive on impulse purchases. When marketing a product or service that is carefully thought about, a carefully crafted buyer's journey and detailed buyer personas are necessary for success. The goal is not to just interrupt the flow and get content in front of a potential buyer, but...

Bidding on competitor brand keywords sounds like a great way to steal market share. On the surface it's a no-brainer, but if you dig deeper you'll find things aren't so simple. The intention of a search query has a big impact on which result will be relevant to a searcher. Are they simply trying to log into a bank account and using voice search to pull up their bank's website on Google, or are they researching which bank to open an account with? Another potential of sponsoring your...

PayPal, Tesla, SpaceX - everything Elon Musk touches turns to gold. At this point, it's not news that Elon Musk will, at least temporarily, take the reins at Twitter after his nearly hostile takeover of the company. However, it's worth examining the future of Twitter as an ads platform now that arguably the world's most successful CEO could shortly be performing a massive overhaul of the company. By taking Twitter private, he will not only assume a leadership role but he will have absolute...

In recent years, organic traffic has become secondary to paid traffic as Google's business model continuously shifts towards a pay to play model to maximize their revenue. Does this mean organic results have gone by the wayside? Absolutely not. Organic search rankings are especially critical for people in the early stages of researching a topic or product that interests them. If your company ranks well, it creates the opportunity to become viewed as a trusted source. Conversions become much...

Google has a challenge most companies would love to have. They have over 4 billion users and are likely close to the most users the market will allow. How does a company with no room to gain users increase its revenue? The upcoming PaLM (pathway language model) search update could help Google address this very issue. PaLM will have a significant impact on Google's ability to translate sites from English into many other languages with greater accuracy than ever before. Translated search...

What use do you have for a 15 page report on your digital marketing initiatives? Not much. All reputable marketing agencies will provide reports on the state of your marketing on a regular basis. The point many agencies miss is that clients have no clue what to do with most of this data. The real benefit of a report is not metrics and numbers, but the insights and guidance an agency can provide based on and alongside your data. If your agency is not providing insights and actionable items...

Google announced this week that it will be sunsetting Universal Analytics (UA), also referred to as Google Analytics 3 (GA3), on July 1st, 2023. It will be replaced with the currently released Google Analytics 4 (GA4), which promises to change the advertising process using AI. Historically, we marketers have concluded that Google's AI is far from perfect. In reality, the death of UA means less detailed reporting, less access to data, and more reliance on Google for insights. This slap in the...

Facebook (Meta) has begun to restrict targeting certain categories (such as health causes and politics) within their advertising platforms. This affects not only Facebook but also Instagram and WhatsApp, which they also own. Now in a position no corporation wants to be in, Meta is in the process of performing damage control on their reputation and public image. Reacting to pressure from groups like Apple and the governments of various countries, they are playing catch up regarding their user...