Who are Building Mousetraps, Nowadays !

Mousetraps are still in demand. You will always find them, in some corner of a weekly vegetable market. I myself purchased one, though it didn't work up to my expectation and later I bought a ratkill, a chemical pesticide, which worked perfectly. Mousetraps are replaced by chemicals now, and we tend to spend money on few of its alternatives when rats start giving us nightmares!

Mouse inside a household are menace. They pollute your food, make holes in clothes, bedsheet and tear apart some important paper documents. Nobody can live peacefully with them. They are not dull like cockroaches, but a very intelligent creature, who knows how to run away from you, steal your food and bite your clothes, papers and everything you love in the most inconspicuous manner. So, if they have entered inside your premise, you can't afford ignoring them. You will try to buy the best solution. This is what Demand, actually means!

I'll get you rid of mice menace

Mice are not those rodents alone. They appear in many forms before us, sometimes even as humans around us. People who face them in real life are as desperate seeking a solution, as I was a few days ago, trying to get rid of those real rats. Every Organization has a lot of rats inside. People are always searching for a better mousetrap! If you can promise, I will give you a better mousetrap, people are all ears to you. They will start following you. Just look at the great following of some Babas or religious leader promising peace and heaven after death. That is what the promise for a better mousetrap is. A Sales Pitch! People fall at their feet!! You can make such a promise. All of us can make such a promise and get paid! Identify the mice which are bothering your prospect and start selling your mousetrap to them. Claim that you have a better mousetrap, in your ads. If you are selling flowers on a website, you may conduct a research and write something like this in the caption, "From the data we collect from you guys, interesting facts emerged! x% of these flowers were sent by 20-25 aged people, 40% of them asked us to deliver on their marriage. Most Recommended by the website for those who love someone." I have given you an idea around which you have to create a trustworthy story. See How many of the visitors leave without purchasing. This is how you sell a mousetrap!

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Optimizing Adwords Adtext for Phone Calls- The New Practices !

You all know, Google, no more allows phone number in adtext and sitelinks.

It has been documented that any new ad created with phone number in adtext or sitelink, will get disapproved and old ads will get disabled after sometime. Some old practices have become obsolete and new ones are in place!

You can still write Phone No. in Adtext Display URL

Is the new call extension, the only way, to show your phone number in adtext? Definitely Not! In fact, you can still show, phone number in adtext, because from what I have observed, Intelligent Google, neither considers Display URLs to be part of Adtext, nor Sitelinks, so Adwords Specialist, examining your ad would Approve it! So, the only thing you don't have to do is, not to write phone no. in Headline & the remaining two text lines of the ad.

Use of Suggestive prefixes in Display URL

You may write your display url like, example.com/Call-9910115853, or example.com/+91-9910115853 or example.com/dial-9910115853 or +91-9910115853.example.com. I have seen all these gets approved. I haven't tried but would suggest you to try, example.com/tel-9910115853. I think, it too should get approved.

Choose Mobile Call Extension in the option.

There are two options in the new call extension, one you all know will show phone number along with the ad text, and give users the option to call clicking on it if she is on a mobile interface. However, the other option, where on mobile device, click anywhere on the ad connects to your phone, is worth considering.

User won't land on mobile site but would rather get connected to you. This appears as 9910115853(mobile), in extension report. The difference is observed on mobile interface only, on desktop both kind of extensions appears the same. However, some callers may feel awkward, getting connected to the advertiser, when they actually wanted to examine their site. So, I personally run both the extension side by side. It is simple, you have to include both, 9910115853 & 9910115853(mobile) in setting and they will appear in rotation on mobile devices. Reporting too would give you two rows. After sometime you can take decision, which one is best for you !

Use of word "Call" in Headline or line after that

Use of word call in Headline, increases the response rate on phone, if you depend on call extension.If you have phone number in adtext(display url), both the positions, Headline and line just below it works well, to boost call response rate.

Call Forwarding Feature and Conversion Tracking

Call Forwarding feature allows you to investigate, all the interaction through phone number displayed on your ad. If opted in, Google shows unique number to every user who even if dials it after sometime, triggers the data metrics in your account. This feature is not available in India. So, the accounts which doesn't have this feature and also those who haven't opted for it by choice, will see considerable fall in reported conversion in their account, but that is a false alarm and you know why! Don't you??

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Guest Posting on this blog: How to get Published ?

I have got a few queries regarding possibility of publishing on Netargument as Guest Poster. This blog is about 5 years old. However, the objective and seriousness of blogging, blame it on me, has many different phases, which with time has become my blogging policy. I will brief you about my publishing policies, and why they exist. As a Guest Blogger, you too should observe them, to a higher degree!

1. If you can't tell who You are, I can't go ahead with you

   I have never done anonymous blogging. In fact I hate it. I want to see your public profile. I want to know who you are before reading your work. if, you have created a profile with confusing pseudonym on some social portal or you are not willing to share your real identity, I won't even take the pain of reading what you write. You must brief about yourself. I know everybody doesn't have a personal blog, but I think everybody who wants to write do have a public profile, from where i can judge who you are in your real life.

2. Original Content is required, even if someone may call it funny

   I have always tried to post original content. If you don't have something unique in your post, then it is not worth sharing. I know original contents sometimes sounds funny and bizarre to someone, but I am OK with that. Let the vibration of your mind and heart come out in your writing. Good writers don't create contents focusing on words alone, they pass on their mental and emotional juice in their writing, and till you decide to start doing it, no matter however poor it may seem initially, you can not attract and entertain a bigger audience at any point of time. It is better to start doing it late than never, if you dream to be in that order.

3. I love hyperlinks, but they should not be Yours only

   If you have gone through my writings, you must have seen how generous I am with referring to others' work, wherever it makes sense. Let me tell you I have generously given link to people and products. I was never paid for doing that. I expect the same spirit, while you submit your work. Don't ever try to hide the credit of Original Authors from where you have learnt, and don't ever try to paraphrase someone else's work as your own. I know some people manage to rank above the original writers on google, simply building upon their work for some keywords. It is not because of some google's algorithm, it is because of ethics of writing.

4. Don't Try to use the privilege to Please or Displease Your Boss

   Earlier, Blogging was part of my hobby. I was not serious about it. I used to write anything, I wanted to write. Slowly, I noticed, this has stared giving me reactions in real life. I never promoted it, but people around me started reading and discussing it without my knowledge. So much, that at one point of time, I had even to explain my postings. No, I had to delete many of them. I was employed with some organization, then, and the person asking for it, did it in a really nice manner. Everything went smoothly, and nobody was hurt in the end, I still have a lot of respect for him. It was the end of a chapter. I learnt a lesson on accountability. You may be hurting someone, even if your intention is not to do so. So, be extra careful, because, You may not get the chance to get it deleted, once it gets posted here, and You may not be fortunate like me! I would only ask you to learn from my own experience. If, you are employed with some organization, please don't submit your love, hate, rave or rant about its product or culture.

5. Don't Offer me Money for Publishing, I rather want to pay people for writing here

   I want money! I want to build this blog as one of the topmost blog in its niche. I need a lot of writers, but I don't want writers who would rather pay me for posting what they write here. I must also tell you, I too have passed through the phases of temptation to write paid posts. In fact, I was about to accept an offer of regular paid postings on this blog. Thanks to the response from a person, who wrote these words,

   "We are happy to hear that you are interested. What we are looking to do is guest blog on site like yours. We will provide you fresh content written by our professionals. Posts could be about clothing, fashion, eyewear, sports like wakeboarding, snowboarding, climbing, surfing, skateboarding, etc. We would be able to pay( as per your website Page Rank) per post with 2 permanent do follow links. The post frequency will be 2-3 a week depending on what is available if you are interested, more or less is always an option depending on what you would like. We have many partners always looking to guest blog, and we have a few that would go well with your blog and your audience, would that be something that you would be interested in doing?
   
   How we determine what to pay:
   PR 1- $5 per post
   PR 2- $10 per post
   PR 3- $15 per post
   And so forth....
   
   Also, as your PR goes up so does the payment for future post.... let me know what you decide..."

   Now, You know what I decided, I don't want to kill this blog for narrow gains, I want to make it real big!

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Is Google's Vertical Search really a threat to online Directories?

What are Vertical/Specialized Search?

Those of you who haven't recently searched on Google for Hotels or tickets, may not be knowing, what this vertical search is. Google, has a while back launched services similar to many booking engines already available for such type of services.

These Booking engines, are already big clients of google, regularly availing adwords platform, for driving traffic on their portal. Some of them are not happy over this move by Google and have threatened lawsuit. Google, to mitigate the aftermath has listed some of these service providers, with great degree of prominence, prompting users to book their tickets through their site.

You should google on some such terms, like - Hotels in delhi- to know in depth, How it looks like!

Is the threat Real?

Is Google really trying to kill such booking engines, or, is it trying to play a longer game, which though now looks like a friendly approach towards, these Booking Services, might be a long term plan to eliminate them.

So, the fear is real, and maybe Google won't need them in future.

Value Addition or Just another Google' UI Experiment?

Let us postpone the possibilities of future, and concentrate on what it offers in terms of user experience to a searcher. After all, the person searching for something, needs to be convinced that the product or service is genuine. Let us think about it from that angle.

Google's SERP for these searches has been spammy for a long time. Google has inserted, map, local listing and a lot of nonsense, into SERP, for these terms.

Who doesn't know, what kind of crap Google's local listings are!

It is full of spams, with self written testimonials by businesses. Many businesses listed there often use others' brand names for stealing their queries. In a nutshell, it is not something which deserves such a high position in search result. It is bad for Good Businesses who lose customers to bad ones because of these listings, and also, for consumers who get cheated because of these fake listings, reviews and ratings which features with a lot of prominence in SERP. In the long run, they are harmful for Google too.

It is around Trust, not the Artificial Buzz

The listings which are really beneficial for users is not a very easy task to achieve. It is not the rave or rant of any xyz, that should feature with such a prominence, but, it is rather how much genuine they sound. So, actually it is not into How big the buzz around something is, rather how much real people are behind that buzz, that is important, which Google does not tell you. But, that is the greatest requirement of our time!

So, the future doesn't belong to the one, who features with prominence there.

The Future belongs to those who can prove, the testimonials, they are showing, no matter if they are fewer, are by the real people, whose only intention was to avail their services.

People are already exposed to a lot of social networks and they know, what are the comments they should trust and what they should ignore or suspect.

Coming back to Google's Specialized Search and similar online directories, If you can't help users take decisions, for which they will feel obliged to thank you, then you don't deserve to be where you are. Same goes with Google, if people start hating you after following your suggestions, then certainly, you will too lose their attention.

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Adwords, New Call Extension is The Game Changer for Tech Support, BPO, PPC

Tech Support Business in India

The business of Tech Support for overseas clients is booming in India.

The formula is simple. Arrange for a few tech experts, run ads through google adwords account and charge the customer for services. An Ideal Low Investment Business Opportunity! Because of seemingly very low  entry barrier, it has become an attractive business opportunity for tech savvy people.

Reasons why India is ideal for this kind of Support Business are:

1. India has great number of Engineering and Software experts. In fact India is among topmost countries producing such skilled labor at low cost.
2. Indians can speak good English. They can even be easily trained to fake american accent and there is very little chance native Americans may even notice. The reason why it is the most preferred destination for MNC call centers. 
3.  People in US, Europe are willing to pay for Tech Support services. If one can provide tech support in  specified time limit, people are willing to pay for it.

Old Style Tech Support Adwords

For a long time, Google adwords has played a significant role in call generation for such kind of businesses. Ad text written with a strong emphasis on call, with a toll free number written in the text itself, had made the click and website redundant. There used to be significantly higher number of calls compared to clicks on the website. Ads used to generate calls purely in direct proportion to the impressions gathered by the ads.
Google apparently took note of it and decided to disable ads with phone number in ad texts.

New Call Extension, The Game Changer

The upgraded call extension or new call extension, is the only way now to display your phone numbers in the ad text. So, now Google decides, when to show your telephone number and when to hide it. I've seen typically when Ads start falling in CTR, call extension stops showing and ads start gathering clicks. So, the era when such businesses were thriving on few clicks and a lot of calls is gone now or it is soon to become past. Yes, the ads which were written in the past are still showing on google. However, they will soon be disabled and PPC experts shall have to write it in a new way.

If you want to generate good number of calls through adwords, then, you can't ignore CTR & Quality Score now. Otherwise, phone number may disappear! Yes, all such companies shall have to rework on both the campaign and economic side of this business.

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10 Blog Post Layout Tips, for Better Reading and Engagement!

Your Blog Posts may have better engagement, If you adhere to the following tested methods for better Readability!

1. Line Length should be between 500-600 pixels. We have large size, screens nowadays, especially desktops, which has widescreens. Still, the 500-600 px limit is the best width for your post size. 

2. The ideal ratio between, Post space and sidebar is 5:3. This ratio has been considered sacred for millenniums and has been used in the creation of great artistic pieces, and it still works best. I am using it for a long time and recommend you to use it, if you don't have any other idea.

3. The length of a paragraph should be around 300 characters, for better scan-ability. It is roughly around 5 lines. You should think of a para break after every 5-6 lines. More than 7 is Long! 

4.  If you write the first Text of the post in bold, and increase its relative size, it increases the depth of the visit.

5. Margin or white spaces should be smooth and even all around the post.

6. White Spaces between two elements increases the attention towards them. Just have a look at the top header and footer of this blog. It is just like a creature in sea would try to find an island on either side. White spaces acts like sea water!

7. If post looks crumpled, increase the line gap height, anywhere between 1.3 to 1.5

8. A Light Background color in text area enhances the duration of the visit.

9.  If you end your post at the mid of the Line Length, it increases the engagement with post footer.

10. Don't implement more than 3 tips in one go in your blog, because it is not Single Size Fits All. Every blog is different & requires some deviations from the norm!

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Facebook Open Graph Fix- Known Issues Solved !

Facebook Liked Description on Timeline

I had thought of writing on this topic for a long time. However, web is already filled with open graph documentations, so, I would only discuss the troubleshooting part, which you can easily implement, and has not been discussed earlier.

1. Meta Tag inside body

   Remove all the meta tags inside <body>....</body> in your template. Sometimes, you add them to fix some problems as a short cut method. However, this is a very bad practice. Even, Schema.org documentation recommends adding them in some cases, but, you should preferably avoid adding a meta tag which is something like, <meta...../>, outside </head> of your blog or website.

2. Website Logo not showing.

   You know facebook requires pictures of high quality, in specified size and formats. However, you can easily avoid all these hassles by simply uploading the Logo as Facebook Fan Page Logo and just right click there, copy the image url and use the URL in open graph, like, <meta content='http://profile.ak.fbcdn.net/hprofile-ak-snc4/276570_154982213146_6949695_q.jpg' property='og:image'/>

3. Author Description is Weird.

   Here too Author Description for Blog should be like: <meta content='Author Description URL' property='article:author'/>. If you use About page of your blog or website. It will show as Author:About, on facebook, and hover card too would look blank and weird. If you create a page with different title, even then, hover card wouldn't show description. To avoid hassles, here too use the Facebook profile page url, like <meta content='http://www.facebook.com/rameshbook' property='article:author'/>, and everything gets fixed!

4. Website name not showing in "liked" or "shared".

   You are missing an app id. create a facebook app, and give it your website's name, add the app id meta tag, like, <meta content='your app id' property='fb:app_id'/>, soon the liked article would show, "Liked on Your App Name", like, "liked on Netargument".

5. Facebook not reading the corrected tags and using the old one.

   It takes time, but you can get it corrected if you want in no time, simply visit this url and put your page url. This will update facebook servers, and your description will start showing according to fresh tags.
   

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5 Powerful HTML Tags for content SEO of Website or blog!

Following Tags will help Your Content catch the attention of Search Engines, in a Faster and Better way:

1. Heading Tags, <h>

   You can use headings like h1, h2..... h6 to tell what the contents are. There should be a hierarchy. If your blog is using h1 for blog header, h2 for post header, consistently throughout the blog, search engines can understand what are blog, post headings and subheadings. I use, h1 for Blog heading, h2 for Post Heading, h3 for post subheading, h4 for comment heading and h5 for sidebar heading. Most Important are h1, h2 & h3 which if nested properly gets indexed by search engines. 

2. Paragraph tag, <p>
   

   Paragraphs wrapped in <p>....</p> are good for seo. It is considered the most important tags wrapping texts. Since, most texts on web are wrapped within this tag, search engines look out for them. You must use them in all your posts, to mark the paragraph, start and end.

3. Emphasis <em> & Strong <strong>

   Many people don't know, <u>...</u> and <b>....</b> are obsolete tags. Use <em>...</em> to emphasize some text & <strong>.....</strong> to make it appear bold. The text within these tags are given due weightage by Search bots.

4. Use of Section Tag, <section>

   There has been great debate on its usage. There are more Don'ts than Do's. Important point to remember are, it should have an embedded <h> tag, and content shouldn't be meant for syndication. As per my understanding, it is meant for article's bullet points in a box or table of content or some standalone information embedded within an article which might be of interest and importance to the reader, but are not meant for syndication. A kind of extra information not to be confused with main article body. It is meant for telling the search bots that the piece of information is, though related to the article is not its part. Use it in that way. 

5.  Theme Break <hr>

   This horizontal rule tag is of historical importance for applying horizontal styling, but now, it has acquired a new meaning. It means theme break! Whenever, you apply <hr>...</hr> or self closing, <hr/>, it means the content after and before are of two different themes. What is of interest to search engines here is that, they may start sniffing of themes and information around them. It has been learnt its usage brings indexing enhancements. 

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Breadcrumb with Newer Post, Old Post Navigation, code, For Enhanced Blog Pageview

Breadcrumbs are trails of webpages in a website that you have browsed, shown mostly on the top of the pages for better back and forth navigation.

Breadcrumb with Post Navigation

In blogger we use Labels as Breadcrumb, which though are not true breadcrumb, we just show the crosss linkage of pages across Labels. Since, labels themselves may no be cross linked, it is advised to show only one of them, to avoid any possible penalty.

Here, I would be giving you a code which not only shows breadcrumb on your blog post but also, has an embedded Newer post, older Post Navigation on the top, that sits seamlessly on the top of your blogger post. Check this post for Live Demo, and play with it to learn how it functions.

First, add the following code into the CSS of your blogger template:

.breadcrumbs{border-bottom:1px solid #E7E7E7;
font: 8px "Lucida Sans Unicode","Lucida Grande",sans-serif;}.charfix {
 font-size:130%; line-height:0; } 

Then find the below code in your template,

<b:include data='top' name='status-message'/>

Immediately above that paste this code:

<b:include data='posts' name='breadcrumb'/>

Now Find, the Following code in your template:

<b:includable id='main' var='top'>

There may be two places of the above code. If it occurs once, paste the below code (Modified form of Anish's Code) just above it. If twice, then paste below code above second one:

<b:includable id='breadcrumb' var='posts'>
<b:if cond='data:blog.homepageUrl != data:blog.url'>
<b:if cond='data:blog.pageType == &quot;static_page&quot;'>
<div class='breadcrumbs'><span><a expr:href='data:blog.homepageUrl' rel='tag'>Home</a></span> &#187; <span><data:blog.pageName/></span></div>
<b:else/>
<b:if cond='data:blog.pageType == &quot;item&quot;'>
<!-- breadcrumb for the post page -->
<b:loop values='data:posts' var='post'>
<b:if cond='data:post.labels'>
<div style='display:inline'><span class='breadcrumbs' xmlns:v='http://rdf.data-vocabulary.org/#'>
<span typeof='v:Breadcrumb'><a expr:href='data:blog.homepageUrl' property='v:title' rel='v:url'>Home</a></span>
<b:loop values='data:post.labels' var='label'>
<b:if cond='data:label.isLast == &quot;true&quot;'>
 &#187; <span typeof='v:Breadcrumb'><a expr:href='data:label.url' property='v:title' rel='v:url'><data:label.name/></a></span>
</b:if>
</b:loop>
 &#187; <span><data:post.title/></span>
    </span><b:if cond='data:newerPageUrl'><b:if cond='data:olderPageUrl'>
    
      <a class='blog-pager-older-link' expr:href='data:olderPageUrl' expr:id='data:widget.instanceId + &quot;_blog-pager-older-link&quot;' expr:title='data:olderPageTitle'><span id='blog-pager-older-link'><span class='Charfix'>&#9668;</span>  </span></a>
    
    </b:if>
    
      <a class='blog-pager-newer-link' expr:href='data:newerPageUrl' expr:id='data:widget.instanceId + &quot;_blog-pager-newer-link&quot;' expr:title='data:newerPageTitle'><span id='blog-pager-newer-link' style='float:right'><data:newerPageTitle/><span class='Charfix'>&#9658;</span>  </span> </a>
     </b:if></div>
<b:else/>
<div class='breadcrumbs'><span><a expr:href='data:blog.homepageUrl' rel='tag'>Home</a></span> &#187; <span>Unlabelled</span> &#187; <span><data:post.title/></span></div>
</b:if>
</b:loop>
<b:else/>
<b:if cond='data:blog.pageType == &quot;archive&quot;'>
<!-- breadcrumb for the label archive page and search pages.. -->
<div class='breadcrumbs'>
<span><a expr:href='data:blog.homepageUrl'>Home</a></span> &#187; <span>Archives for <data:blog.pageName/></span>
</div>
<b:else/>
<b:if cond='data:blog.pageType == &quot;index&quot;'>
<div class='breadcrumbs'>
<b:if cond='data:blog.pageName == &quot;&quot;'>
<span><a expr:href='data:blog.homepageUrl'>Home</a></span> &#187; <span>All posts</span>
<b:else/>
<span><a expr:href='data:blog.homepageUrl'>Home</a></span> &#187; <span>Posts filed under <data:blog.pageName/></span>
</b:if>
</div>
</b:if>
</b:if>
</b:if>
</b:if>
</b:if>
</b:includable>

Save it, and again add or overwrite the existing CSS for the New Post, old post link, preferably through Add CSS feature of your blog:

#blog-pager-older-link, #blog-pager-newer-link, #home-link{background:#DDDDDD; border:double;padding:1px;display:inline-block;font-size:9px;}

Save, the template & check, how it looks like on post pages. You will find something like, one shown in the image of this blog.

(Note, This blogpost may not show the Navigation, till it is the newest post. For Checking how it functions and live demo, check an older post)

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Targeting Long tail Search Terms through Adwords marked Low Search Volume!

What are Long Tails?

Contrary to what many people believe, Long tail has nothing to do with the length of the search query. Even a short search term may be the part of long tail. The terminology has something to do with its graphical representation. If you  plot keywords against search volumes, you will get a graph of Small number of Search Queries getting most of the volume, which shows as a Graphical Peak with steep slope downward, and a Long tail afterwards, with steady slope almost running parallel to the axis, representing terms which are Larger in number, but individually triggers very low volume of searches.

History

Historically, it was Amazon, who discovered that a large number of their collection were unnoticed because of low volume of searches against them on homepage, and they can boost sales by presenting them alongwith their mainstream products. Individually, they have few seekers, but combined together they become huge!. Hence the term Long tail !

Importance and Targeting of Long Tail Keywords

What is of importance here is, in the Graph, Area under the curve represents, the Reach of your Ads. You can cultivate and grow this Long tail in the curve to such an extent that
Area (Long Tail  Search Terms)   >    Area (High Search Vol.. Keywords) !
Can you afford to ignore them?? 

In Google Adwords, Google doesn't allow you to target most keywords which are part of this long tail, because they are huge in number and individually have very low search volume against them. Since, Google has to monitor ads targeting search queries for a large number of legal, ethical and safety parameters and requirements, it is not feasible for them to allow targeting ads on such queries. So, you find Low Search volume notifications against them. However, you may have your ads appear for these terms through broad matched similar looking keywords. That seems to be the only simple way of targeting Long Tails. Other way you can use Dynamic Search Ads, but then a lot depends on Data Structuring of your Website and Content Optimization.

Chances of appearing on these Long tail terms increases with better structuring of your adgroups. If your adgroups are well themed, giving clear cut message to the system, what they mean for, with respect to keywords, categories, situations etc., it will in most probability, occupy most of the Long tail terms, automatically. The Google, though in its documentations  doesn't reveal much about the mechanism of how broad match keywords are matched, the point not to be forgotten is it always adds a factor, Other relevancy factors, in various documentations. So, actually it is all into the structuring of your Adgroups that gives the message of what is being targeted and where it can be matched and more important Projected ! You can fine tune it further by adding Nagative Matches or if you are willing to go farther, try Penumbra Match Type. Something, you should never forget, in adwords, it is actually the Good Structuring of Your Adgroup/Campaign, that leads you towards perfection in targeting, not by inserting a lot of keywords into your account.

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Dynamic Search Ad with Remarketing is an Effective Low Budget Adwords Strategy

Dynamic Search ads

Dynamic Search ads are ads with Dynamic Headline, which are automatically generated by Google, depending on the content of the page and the website. It places your ad according to your historical performance in Organic Search

• You can still write remaining two lines. 
• It doesn't require any keyword in the adgroup.
•  If you have keywords in the adgroup it will target ones not there.   

Obvious benefits you can derive from Dynamic Search Ads are:

• It has the potential for supplementing your SEO. It judges queries where you can get better clickthroughs, automatically.
• You get extra placement on keywords, which are already performing well.
• It matches the headline, Search Query, Landing Page automatically, and also improves upon the CTR on auto pilot. You can see it improving with time.
• It can throw ads on queries, which you won't be able to target through conventional methods, those typical Low Search Volume types, that too according to the website content!

Adwords Dynamic Search ad with Organic Listing

Although it works outside the periphery of keywords in the adgroup, you may find them competing with other ads in some situation where you have multiple adgroups. So, don't get surprised, because it only excludes keywords in the adgroup and not the keywords in the campaign.

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Remarketing through Display ads

Remarketing is simple to set up. It is an adwords feature, that works through doubleclick coookies, which allows you to track and show your ads to already defined kind of visitors on your website. Visitors may not come through adwords they may come through any source. You need to install the doubleclick patch through your google analytics account. If you have opted for display content support in GA, then default code includes this patch. After this you simply need to specify what kind of visitors you want to remarket, and change the Privacy Note on your website according to the guidelines. Remarketing allows you to repeatedly show ads to visitors who have visited certain segment of your website, as specified by you, whenever they visit a website having adsense. For better results:

• You should have a dedicated adgroup for remarketing only.
• You should have impression caps for ads enabled. Don't show same ad to a visitor multiple times. It might irritate them.
• You should have view through conversion column enabled.
• You should have rationally fixed cookie expiry time, so that it stops showing after sometime.

Both the feature works well for advertisers who want to make the most of SEO of ones website. Both the feature has the capability of utilizing your SEO efforts for improving the traffic. It is a low risk Adwords Strategy, which any website owner can implement without any need of big expenditure on either adwords budget or management of it. It gives great results in minimum efforts!

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Simplified Schema formatting of content for Search Rich Snippet & Adwords

After microdata, microformats & RDFa for structuring data on the webpage, Google, Yahoo & MSN came together to formulate a universal categorization language on the web. Their Joint collaboration is schema.org convention of tagging information, which can be easily mastered, applied and understood by Search Engines & webmasters.

RDFa has been a popular way of Data Structuring for a long time now. After the adoption of RDfa open graph by Facebook and RDFa goodrelations for ecommerce, it has become a popular convention. However, with all major search engines announcing the transition towards Schema.org, it is better to talk about schema only.

Schema taxonomy relies on hierarchical structuring of data along the attributes, itemscope, itemtype & itemprop. There are few other attributes which are of lesser importance, like itemid. We shall concentrate on the most important ones only, here.

Itemscope, is the signal to search robots that the container where it is present, contains some data of interest to them which are structured according to the schema.org convention. Like, if the <div itemscope..... is encountered, it expects itemtype data to know what is the subject of the structured data. Whether, it is person, profession, organisation.... Here, comes the role of the attribute itemtype. So, the container div now should give the information about the kind of data expected within it. The attribute itemtype, refers to a particular url for this purpose. If the data contained is of a person, then itemtype should refer to schema.org/Person, if the data is of a professional service. It should refer to schema.org/ProfessionalService. So, our div container may look like,
< div itemscope itemtype="schema.org/Person"
<div itemscope itemtype="schema.org/ProfessionalService"
OR, if I want it to remain composite and split the div into two spans containing, personal and professional informations, then, I would go like this:

<div > <span itemscope itemtype="schema.org/Person"
<span itemprop="....."
<span....... Data about person
........
/span>
<span itemscope itemtype="schema.org/ProfessionalService"
<span itemprop="......"
<span....... Data about Professional Service
/span></div>

The above is a div container that contains both kind of information. Important point here is that, You can write only those values of itemprop, which are present on the itemtype referred schema url. So, just go there and pick them for marking. It is itemprop, which tells search robots, what the container contains. It may be name, nick, job-title, organization.....

So, if I write about myself, the structured data would look like:

<div class="profile"> <span itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/Person">
<span itemproperty="name"> Ramesh Kumar</span> is a
 <span itemproperty="job-title"
>Google Adwords Qualified Professional</span> 
at <span itemproperty="affiliation">Netargument</span>
</span>.
<span itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/ProfessionalService">
<span itemproperty="logo"><img src="https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-NaGoGaTOsY8/Rmz9V65lRNI/AAAAAAAAADA/hMyiZDQQw7U/s144/logo_qualified_ind_500.jpg"/></span></span></div>

Search Engine will interpret this data as,
Name: Ramesh Kumar, job-title: Google Adwords ...... Working at: Netargument. Logo:  image URL.

Rich Snippet showing Job-title and Org, appearing in Google Custom Search 

Here, if I don't use itemtype="/ProfessionalService", then , I may not have been able to use "logo" attribute and may have been using "photo" as itemprop, which would confuse the bots that the image is my pic. Two spans prevent this situation.

Similarly, you may mark up an offer within a product div, like

<div itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/Product"><span itemprop="brand">........<span itemprop="offers"></span></span></div> 

The markups are not limited to search snippets only. The new Offer Extension in Adwords too are rumored to work through it.

Warning: Image-url is not a valid itemproperty, Blogger Template Error![Solved]

Please note, blogger's default template contains itemprop="image-url", because of which you may get error in rich snippet tool, wherever you have hyper-linked images. This itemprop value is wrong, you should change all such values to itemprop="image". This will solve the problem.

Note: In the Examples, above, I have broken the divs into span, which is actually an styling element. You can use any element like, <p>, <a> or even nested div, depending on the situation. However, I personally avoid nested divs, because of SEO reasons. 

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Google Adwords Certification Exam, Qualification Matters!

I occasionally get queries from both individuals and corporates regarding how to prepare for Google adwords certification or how to become google adwords certified partner. There has also been big debate on the issue - Should one get the formal qualification or not?

Many professionals who used to flaunt their Google Adwords Certified Individual or Company badges have stopped doing so. Some are protesting against Google. For some, certification just doesn’t matter, and for others it has become difficult Now!

I have noted, ever since, the two tier exam system has been introduced, badges of some otherwise reputed companies disappeared. So, I may not be entirely wrong in assuming that “Protest” is a nice excuse! After the retirement of the old exam system, and introduction of the new exam system, a relatively long time period has existed, when very few were actually adwords qualified. So, the bad news is that people do fail in the Google Adwords Certification exam. More important, even those who have otherwise great academic record do fail in this exam. So, if you have heard from people that it is rather an easy exam for which no preparation is required, you should think again about it. I have done my duty cautioning you. Also, if you are not, Perry Marshall or Brad Geddes, then “Protest” is not the best way to go. If you are still not convinced, go through the website of some big adwords management company. If one individual out of some hundred employees is qualified, it means how desperate they are to get it. May I tell you, they want it by hook or crook! So, it won’t be wise to say that it doesn’t matter.

Google Adwords  documentation is spread over Adwords Learning Module, and in the form of various questions and answers which are equally important. So, don’t ever think it is an easy walk through.

During GAP era, which has been retired now, things were rather easy. if one was familiar with basic concepts, then one may very easily pass this exam. However, the entire system has changed, and Google throws really tricky questions nowadays, which will make you ponder over them. If you have some doubt regarding something, questions are thrown, specifically designed to screen you out. So, guess papers, crammers lists, which are in abundance all around the internet, are of little use. I would advise you to keep yourself away from them, Google, nowadays keep on changing the questions too. What causes people fail in this exam are the doubts they hold in certain aspects of adwords . So, the best way to prepare is to clear your doubts regarding anything. The best way to do so is to ask questions in forums. Try to answer others’ queries. Read some good blogs regarding best practices and keep yourself abreast of the latest in terms of user interface and practices. I’ve seen people who are active in forums interacting with different kind of people, pass the exam easily. The reason is, they gain clarity of thinking by doing so. 

If you are new to adwords, you should also try to get your hands on the adwords interface, first. Set up a dummy account or an active account for experimenting with features. Try to understand the learning module by experimenting side by side. Familiarity with features and navigation is very important. After that read as much as possible about its various aspects.

Earlier, we used to say, simple walk through the concepts is enough to pass this exam, but, now you shouldn’t try this exam without feeling confident that you really know it well. You do not require a very high level of IQ to clear this exam, but you do need to devote good time on it.

Try to avoid failure in the very first attempt. I’ve seen people losing hope after failures. So, prepare as much as you can before the first attempt itself. If you fail, by any chance, you should study well again, identifying the areas where you are weak and diligently start clearing your doubts regarding anything.

If one really wants to get qualified, purposefully studies the documentations, practices on the adwords interface, there is no reason one should fail.

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Adwords Penumbra Keyword Match Type, works for Competitor Brand Keywords, Yes!

Just like Earth blocks the Sun but, Sideway rays still Lights! 

Penumbra targeting in adwords is, Keyword – [keyword], match type. It is not officially recognized!

There are situations when you find huge traffic around an exact match search query and you have sufficient reasons to believe a good potential lies around but out of it.

Whereas, traffic around [keyword] is like a bull that will hit only the domain bearing that, or if they ever drift towards you they will bounce out instantly, but traffic slightly away from the exact match is ready to flirt with you, penumbra keywords match type is the way to go.

Most of the competitor’s brand keywords are the categories where you find such type of situation, traffic there is highly disinterested in what you offer & targeting them may mean burn out. But, people may be ready to turn towards you who are just out of this exact spot. They may be review seeker, people having complaints with the brand or something like that. They will listen and entertain you. Go for Brand-[Brand] targeting. It works!

Another situation where you may find it useful is, Location-[Location], targeting. Here, too [Location] may have huge traffic in which you may not be interested in, but  search traffic region surrounding it may be of good interest for you. I myself have tried it in a travel campaign which seemed to have traffic only around the exact match and anything like, location travel, location holiday, location hotel failed to trigger ads due to low search volume. However, Location-[Location], targeting worked like a magic!

Penumbra Match Type Best Practices

This kind of keyword-[keyword], match type should be practiced with utmost care. A Google rep. had cautioned me that, adding keyword as negative match, tells the system that you don’t want it. Since, you may be using the blocked word in some other targeted keywords, you should keep penumbra targeting in a separate ad group, so that it doesn’t at all interferes with others in visible or invisible ways.

Another point to note is that, you should not only set keyword-[keyword] match type, but should also eliminate different other keywords in such an adgroup which may trigger unwanted exposure. In this way you should refine your targeting.

Finally, don’t go for it without trying the keyword itself. Proceed in this manner stepwise:
keyword
keyword-[keyword]
keyword-“keyword”


photo credit: motjetom via photopin cc

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