position2

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Category: Paid Search

  • Testing The Health Of Your Website – Important Things To Do

     

    How healthy is your website? We ask because it’s as crucial a factor as any external ranking factors, given all the Google algorithm changes we have seen in past years. The recent Google Panda 4.2 update is still rolling out and the effect of that change has yet to land.

    When it comes to the overall health of a website there are a few things that you need to monitor on a regular basis. And by doing so, the website is more likely to rank better and not lose presence on search engine ranking results.

    Keep a close watch on these important points to maintain the overall health of a website:

    1. Domain Age of a website

    Is your website expiring in a year or so? Better renew your domain age as soon as possible. This is one of the factors that underscores the authority of the website. Long term ownership indicates long term intent and this can have an impact on search engine performance. If it’s possible, have at least 5-10 years of domain ownership.

    website age

    2. Temporary redirects (302 redirects to 302 redirects)

    Set up permanent redirects (301 redirects) immediately after pages are removed or page names are changed on your website, particularly if you continually make changes to the site. You need a proper redirect to the newly created page when you have removed pages or changed existing pages. ‘Not Found’ is the epitome of bad user experience.

    temporary redirects

    Image Source

    3. XML and HTML Sitemap presence

    A sitemap tells search engine spiders about the various pages of your website content. It’s a file listing your web pages. Keep a close eye on Sitemap update on Webmaster Tool for faster indexing of website pages (when new pages are added). It allows search engine web crawlers to read the file and more intelligently crawl your site. XML sitemap targets search engine crawlers.

    HTML sitemap delivers better user experience. It helps visitors easily navigate through the contents of a website. HTML sitemap link contains organized lists of various pages of a website which visitors can click, helping them find the pages they are looking for.

    XML and HTML Sitemap presence

    4. Error pages and broken links check (404 – Not Found)

    Pages that fail to load, broken links and error URLs are dead-ends to search engines. And they make for unhappy users who are more likely to bounce away from the website. A site free of broken links and error URLs significantly increases the site crawling rate and the frequency at which search engine bots visit the site. So, check and fix those error URLs and broken links on regular basis.

    Error pages and broken links check

    5. Page Load Time of the website

    Everyone hates waiting. Visitors will bounce away to competing websites that load faster if your site takes too long to display. People tend to want what they are looking for right now, not 10 seconds from now. Sounds crazy, but it’s true. Pay attention to your page load speed or suffer the loss of potential customers and loss of revenue.

    Website speed is also affected by such factors as the user’s geographical location, network speed, the browser and device used by the visitor. On an average, page load time should ideally be 1.5 to 2.0 seconds. Faster page load time is advantageous to user experience and search engine crawlers. Keep track of page load speed. Google considers page load speed a ranking factor.

    Page Load Time of the website

    Continuously monitor your website’s health, and consider the points listed above. Keep close watch on Google Webmaster Search Console to see how a website has been doing. You’ll get specific details about the areas where improvements can be made.

    Have you looked at the health of your website recently? How healthy was it then, and how healthy is your website now?

    Contact Position2 to optimize your website and keep your website healthy all the time.

  • LinkedIn Makes A Move | Introducing The New Campaign Manager Tool

    Compared to other social media channels, marketing on LinkedIn has never been easy. While running campaigns or even reporting data Facebook and Twitter have provided a greater degree of flexibility and granularity. LinkedIn marketers have been looking for more options to efficiently reach targets on the platform. Remarketing would help. So would custom lists, conversion tracking, goal based pricing, and a better interface. Enter the new Campaign Manager tool. LinkedIn still has some issues to work out, but marketers can heave a sigh of relief. Here’s what caught our attention in the new launch:

    Improved Account Overview

    LinkedIn has overhauled the entire interface structure. Marketers can now view accounts in one location. Reports also follow suit. One click on each account yields a view of all the basic metrics for that particular account.

    LinkedIn Improved Account Overview

     

    Name Your Ads

    To name ads, the old interface defaulted with the headline. With the new tool users have the option to name their ads, a big plus when you’re running different ads with the same headline.

    Campaign Search

    The previous LinkedIn interface showed page after page of campaign names, making it confusing and difficult to locate that one campaign. The new Campaign Manager introduces a search tool where all your campaigns are contained in an ongoing list that’s fast and easy to navigate. This feature comes with a handy toggle allowing users to view performance metrics like impressions, clicks, CTR, Engagements, CPC, CPM, etc. at the campaign level, all while doing away with the annoying ‘loading’ symbol. It’s both faster and hassle free.

    LinkedIn Campaign Search

    Campaign Dashboard

    LinkedIn has really improved the old dashboard by better organizing the tabs and reducing the page load time. The dashboard now looks concise with the much needed toggle option between Performance, Ads, Audience and Bids & Budgets tabs.

    LinkedIn Campaign Dashboard

    The Audience tab is a major improvement. Users can now select the Targeting criteria and then select Categories to add deeper layers to their targeting. On the weak side, the ‘Estimated Targeting Audience’ head shows only a range of the targeted audience rather than the exact number of people.

    Ad Scheduling

    The Ad Scheduling feature in the new Campaign Manager, accessed through the main dashboard, is easily navigable.  Simply go to the Bids & Budget tab in the Campaign Dashboard and select the start date (Start Immediately or Schedule Start option).

    LinkedIn Ad Scheduling

    Audience Insights

    Audience Insights is a remarkable feature in the new Campaign Manager tool. You’ll be able to view the Demographic Categories of the LinkedIn members interacting with your ads. The data is available at the Account, Campaign and Creative level, making it more insightful and actionable.

    LinkedIn Audience Insights

    Improved Ad Testing

    Set up accounts for Ad rotation. With this feature you can run multiple versions of the same ad and measure performance.

    Exporting Data To CSV

    This new version will allow you to export data in CSV format which will lead to greater flexibility and more insightful reporting.

    LinkedIn Exporting Data To CSV

    Is the new campaign manager tool better? Use the ‘Comments’ section below and share your opinion.

     

  • Drupal 8 Is A Boon For Digital Marketing | Position² Blog

     

    The way the average mobile user is tied to a device of choice, marketers can pretty much reach target customers anyplace, at any time. But when a visitor taps on a button that doesn’t respond, the frustrated users’ buyer’s journey ends on your digital doorstep. Drupal 8 is looking to solve that problem.

    A large group of developers, keeping true to the community’s open source roots, is working on Drupal’s Mobile Initiative. The goal is to make the Drupal 8 CMS mobile platform the best there is in today’s increasingly mobile world.

    The Drupal Mobile Initiative aims to address several key functionalities:

    • Responsive themes
    • Enhanced front-end usability
    • Use of administrative forms on mobile
    • Native app integration
    • Ability to use the marketing software you already know
    • Build campaigns with mobile in mind
    • Add, remove or revise content with ease
    • Easily deliver content segmented by audience, language and device type

    Solving these issues will give users a much more satisfying experience on their mobile devices. Websites will be quick to load, with easy to use responsive design. And marketers will be able to adjust their websites on the go.

    Mobile Accessibility

    If your website content isn’t easily accessible on mobile, you have a problem. The increasing use of mobile devices for access to instant information makes this imperative. The Drupal Mobile Initiative will help that access happen. Themes and modules have been developed for easy integration with JQuery Mobile, a framework that allows for cross-platform development of high-speed, easy-to-use mobile sites.

    Accessibility on Mobile for Symphony Services

    Drupal 8 means faster access to customers, as well as a decreased chance of drop offs due to site speed frustration– two things that need to be on any marketer’s radar.

    Making Mobile Editing A Reality

    Marketers can be mobile, just like their customers

    Drupal 8 is not only friendly for visitors, it’s editor-friendly, too. The Drupal Initiative aims to include full admin toolbar and capabilities when logged-in to a Drupal 8 site on a mobile device. Drupal 8’s responsive capabilities and mobile-friendly administrative features ensure your content looks great on any screen.

    A Powerful Tool in the Digital Marketer’s Toolkit

    The ability to provide on the go new and relevant content to your website will meet Google’s love of hyper-fresh results and lead to higher rankings. This makes Drupal 8’s Mobile Initiative a powerful marketing tool. Drupal 7’s powerful and flexible platform has already made it a great CMS for marketers. The mobile advantages being built into Drupal 8 give marketers the chance to take their game even higher.

    Integrate Your Best Of Breed Marketing Software

    Integrate your mix of CRM, Email, Marketing Automation and other software, using Drupal as the backbone.

    Integrating best marketing software-Mindtree

    Reach Global Audiences

    Easily translate anything on your site with built-in user interfaces. The Drupal community produces automatic software translation updates.

    Vormetric-Language Options on Website

    Ease Of Use

    With the new user interface in Drupal 8, your web staff can accomplish in minutes what used to take hours.

    Marketing With Drupal Doesn’t Need To Be An Uphill Climb

    Drupal is a great platform for marketers. With the right modules installed its flexibility and versatility simplify marketing tasks. For example, the metadata module tells Google what your content is about. Content with no metadata is far less likely to rank than the same content with well-optimized meta information.

    Is your enterprise website built with Drupal? Are you facing any maintenance or enhancement problems? We want to hear what you have to say – Voice your opinion about Drupal.

    Position2 at Drupal Camp Bangalore

  • Best of the Week | How Marketing Automation Can Transform Your Business, and much more…

    This week’s hot news, events and videos from the online marketing and social media world.
    How Marketing Automation Can Transform Your Business
    From the Position² Blog This Week:
    How Marketing Automation Can Transform Your Business
    91% of users believe that marketing automation is “very important” to the success of their marketing. The question for marketers isn’t so much ‘will marketing automation technology have an impact on your business’ as ‘it is which trend is the best fit’? Read this blog for the latest and greatest marketing automation trends.
    Top Stories this Week: Social Media
    Top Stories this Week: SEO, PPC and Digital Media
    A Universal SEO Strategy Audit in 5 Steps - Whiteboard Friday Best of the Week Video
    Empowered buyers demand a new level of customer obsession in this age of the customer. Check out this on-demand session featuring Laura Ramos, VP Forrester Research and Sanjay Dholakia, CMO, Marketo. You’ll discover how to deliver optimal customer experiences and drive revenue in the process!
    White Paper: Increase Visibility for Your Content by 4x
    Today’s traditional SEO is inadequate: Ignite your search results by accelerating visibility in more places than ever before.Download this White Paper and learn:

     

    • SEO, why the way we know it is not enough
    • Introducing and implementing Enterprise Visibility Accelerator (EVA)
    • Using multi-channel tracking tools for effective monitoring
    • How EVA benefits businesses.

    Download the complimentary EVA White Paper now

    		 Enterprise Visibility Accelerator-EVA

     

     
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  • Best of the Week | Strategies For Optimizing Your Website, and much more…

    This week’s hot news, events and videos from the online marketing and social media world.
    Strategies For Optimizing Your Website
    From the Position² Blog This Week:
    Strategies For Optimizing Your Website
    A website can be the ideal platform for businesses to make their services and products available online at their customer’s and potential customer’s convenience. Is your website optimized for the future? If not, read this blog for website optimization best practices.
    Top Stories this Week: Social Media
    Top Stories this Week: SEO, PPC and Digital Media
    A Universal SEO Strategy Audit in 5 Steps - Whiteboard Friday Best of the Week Video
    Digital transformation is the use of technology to radically improve customer engagement and performance. In this interactive Harvard Business Review webinar, Westerman describes these nine key elements of digital transformation and shares case studies of companies that are transforming.
    White Paper: The Rapidly Changing World of SEO
    Get a head start in your quest for search engine optimization by going through this insightful white paper. Download this White Paper to know:

     

    • How important SEO is & why it should concern you?
    • Various ways in which you can deploy SEO
    • How to combine Social Media with SEO?
    • SEO best practices and a road map to getting there

    Download the complimentary SEO White Paper now

    		 Search-Engine-Optimization-White-Paper-position2

     

     
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  • A Is For Alphabet, G Is For Google

    Google announced on Monday that it would rebrand itself as Alphabet – a new holding company whose largest wholly owned subsidiary will be Google. Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Google’s co-founders, announced a radical shake-up of the company’s corporate structure and management. Sundar Pichai will control the core search engine business.
    The new holding entity, Alphabet, will preside over various subsidiaries, the largest of which is Google. All shares of Google will automatically convert into corresponding shares of Alphabet, which will continue to trade under the stock ticker symbols GOOG and GOOGL.
    Page will become Alphabet’s CEO, Brin will be its president, and Eric Schmidt will be the executive chairman of Alphabet. Ruth Porat will be its CFO, and David C. Drummond will be the chief legal officer and secretary. The company’s chief business officer, Omid Kordistani, will step down and become “an advisor to Alphabet and Google”, according to the company’s SEC filing. Page, Brin, Schmidt and Drummond will leave Google, whereas Porat will keep her CFO role there and Pichai will take over as CEO.

    alphabet

    Neither Google nor Alphabet owns the domain alphabet.com — BMW does. Alphabet is part of the BMW group and a business mobility solution with a focus on fleet management and financing. BMW’s Alphabet was founded in 1997, so it’s unlikely that the company will give up its long-established domain name.

    Alphabet’s new address https://abc.xyz/ also eschews convention.

    And on a lighter note…

  • Top PPC Tools for Keyword and Competitor Analysis

    Pay Per Click (PPC) evolves on a regular basis. New phrases are born every day in an ever changing landscape of keywords. Day in and day out digital marketers struggle to create the perfect PPC campaign that delivers consistent results and stays ahead of the competition. Success lies in a thorough analysis of a competitor’s PPC keywords and ads, extracting their data and discovering how it influences conversions. From that, analyze your own ads to see what is missing.

    To do this you’ll need to:

    1. Find out who your competitors are
    2. 2 Assess their effectiveness
    3. Determine how they sell
    4. Determine what to extract from their data
    5. Define the size of the opportunity
    6. Estimate how much your competitors invest in paid search
    7. Assess whether you are investing enough in paid search
    8. Optimize your campaigns based on the analysis

    Fortunately, there are a lot of third-party tools to help you with your PPC ad campaigns and issues related to keywords, ad copy, profit, budget, competitor analysis and other parameters.

    To dig deeper into your competitor’s strategies consider some of these top search marketing tools:

    Keyword Competitor - Pay Per Click tool

    KeywordCompetitor provides something that Google does not – the ability to access your competitors’ paid keywords, ads and landing pages. Updates are available on a daily basis.

    ispionage

    Use this PPC tool to gain insights into your competitor’s most effective keywords, ad copy and ad budgets.

    semrush

    Find your PPC competitors based on the keywords you plan to target. You can also access the ad copy used by the competition, and determine who tops paid search results.

    PPC tools for Keyword Analysis - Keyword Spy

    Uncover the competitive landscape and discover a competitor’s PPC campaign strategies with KeywordSpy. Pinpoint profitable keywords targeted by the competition and the successful ad copy in which they are used. There is also a unique ROI indicator you can use to judge the value of keywords.

    PPC tools for Competitor Analysis - Spyfu

    SpyFu maps every place a competitor’s ad has shown up on Google as well as all ad variations used by that competitor.

    Adbeat Logo - Pay Per Click tool

    Browse top ads and ads by format with Adbeat. It includes an ability to uncover competitor strategies and spy on ad copies with split testing. Adbeat also lists the number of days an ad was live, and the exact dates when it was first and last seen.

  • Best of the Week | Leverage The Untapped Potential Of SlideShare, and much more…

    This week’s hot news, events and videos from the online marketing and social media world.
    slideshare
    From the Position² Blog This Week:
    Leverage The Untapped Potential Of SlideShare
    Marketers often overlook leveraging the untapped potential of SlideShare, thinking of it as just a place to upload presentations and webinars. SlideShare is a content marketing social site and a perfect place to generate leads. Here’s how to turn SlideShare into an effective lead generation engine.
    Top Stories this Week: Social Media
    Top Stories this Week: SEO, PPC and Digital Media
    Digital advertising may be top media category in 2016: Report Best of the Week Video
    Digital advertising is expected to become the No. 1 media category in 2016, according to a comScore report released exclusively to CNBC on Thursday. Watch this video where Gian Fulgoni, ComScore Co-Founder gives his views on the subject.
    Persona Based Lead Scoring: The Mystery and the Method
    Download this White Paper and learn:

     

    • Classify leads based on behavior and demographic details
    • Develop a consistent methodology to proffer quality leads to sales
    • Employ data integrity and tracking
    • Deploy marketing automation to improve efficiency and cut costs.?

    Download the complimentary persona Based Lead Scoring White Paper now

    		 Lead_scoring_Whitepaper
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  • Food For Thought: 14 Inspiring Quotes on Digital Marketing

    As marketers, we pride ourselves on developing unique solutions for business challenges. Creativity is the key to our success. Our inspiration comes from a variety of sources. These quotes we have assembled apply to marketers in almost all industry segments. May you find them as inspiring as we have.

    “People shop and learn in a whole new way compared to just a few years ago, so marketers need to adapt or risk extinction.”
    Brian Halligan, HubSpot (TWEET THIS!)

    “Measurement is like laundry. It piles up the longer you wait to do it.”
    Amber Naslund, Sysomos (TWEET THIS!)

    “Good marketing makes the company look smart. Great marketing makes the customer feel smart.”
    Joe Chernov, HubSpot (TWEET THIS!)

    “As you go about creating new customer engagement programs and direct marketing packages for your brand, look for opportunities to give rather than to get. Whoever makes the first kind gesture, as studies show, tends to gain the most.”
    Jeanette McMurtry (TWEET THIS!)

    We want to know what consumers are looking for, what their values are, and how can we meet their needs. It’s not just about Big Data; it’s about translating that into the truth.”
    Gayle Fuguitt, The ARF (TWEET THIS!)

    “We must move from numbers keeping score to numbers that drive better actions.”
    David Walmsley, Marks & Spencer Digital (TWEET THIS!)

    “The best marketing doesn’t feel like marketing.”
    Tom Fishburne, Marketoon Studios (TWEET THIS!)

    “Content is anything that adds value to the reader’s life.”
    Avinash Kaushik, Market Motive (TWEET THIS!)

    “There are three objectives for content marketing: reach engagement conversion. Define key metrics for each.”
    Michael Brenner (TWEET THIS!)

    “SEO is a marketing function for sure, but it needs to be baked into a product, not slapped on like icing after the cake is baked.”
    Duane Forrester (TWEET THIS!)

    “In 2004, good SEO made you remarkable on the web. In 2014, good SEO is a result of being remarkable on the web.”
    Rand Fishkin, Moz (TWEET THIS!)

    “SEO is a noun, verb and adjective.”
    Todd Malicoat (TWEET THIS!)

    “Sometimes when you innovate, you make mistakes. It is best to admit them quickly, and get on with improving your other innovations.”
    Steve Jobs (TWEET THIS!)

    “Without actionable data and clear metrics driven strategy, the marketing organization is being paid to guess.”
    Team Position2 (TWEET THIS!)

    We hope you enjoyed this selection of quotes. Kindly use the comment box below to share your favorite digital marketing quote.

  • Digital Marketing Platforms – Cut Through The Provider Hype

     

    The 2015–16 report, Ovum Decision Matrix: Selecting a Digital Marketing Platform, 2015–16, has crowned Adobe the King of Digital Marketing Platforms. IBM, Oracle and Salesforce rounded out the top four.

    According to Gartner, “Digital marketing platforms are designed to support an extensible set of requirements within a single neighborhood or two. A digital marketing platform exposes key elements as standardized services via a programmatic application programming interface for building custom applications, extensions and integrations with other custom and commercial applications and data sources.”

    A Word Of Caution

    • When it comes to marketing technology or tools, there’s an abundance of choices. According to this chart, those choices doubled in the last year from 947 in Jan 2014 to 1846 in Jan 2015.

    marketing technology landscape

    Image Source

    • Understand your requirements and evaluate multiple value propositions. Some providers may have inflated their value propositions by claiming to be a “digital marketing platform” or a “marketing cloud” when in fact they aren’t. Inflated claims may lead to loss and disappointment in terms of your dollars spent, your time wasted and your expectations not met.
    • Digital marketing platforms are complex inter-disciplinary systems, and work best when the CMO and CIO have a unified technology strategy to guide the organization’s digital marketing transformation.
    • Unicorns are awesome – but we have not yet found one. Have realistic expectations of the tools and technology you choose to implement. Your expectations will be met if and only if the tools are used by people who leverage the correct processes to extract value from your marketing technology stack.

    There are a lot of tools and software that can help make a digital marketer’s job a success. The trick is to choose the right tools and technology that cater to your specific needs at any given point of time.

    Let us know if marketing technology has increased the efficiency and responsiveness of your marketing organization?