SEO Tool Bake-Off: Serpstat vs. SEMrush

There lots of SEO tool suites available to help marketing and SEO pros more effectively manage their search optimization efforts and analyze competitors.

SEO tools - Serpstat vs SEMrushBut two of the most popular SEO tools are Serpstat and SEMRush. Although at first glance the tools offer similar features, on closer inspection it’s clear there are crucial differences which could impact both your search campaign and your wallet.

Here’s a comparison and analysis of the important features of both Serpstat and SEMrush.

UPDATE: Serpstat recently announced a pricing change and “last chance sale” ending June 10. Get the details here.

Starting with the main feature of each tool, both Serpstat and SEMrush allow for easy-to-use and in-depth keyword research of both your own domain and those of competitors.

Each tool offers a variety of data from rank based on geographic region to keyword information on both SEO and PPC campaigns.

Serpstat provides information on over 180 million domains, compared to SEMrush’s 87 million. Serpstat also retains information on over 168 million ads.

Evaluate Keyword by Difficulty
Both tools offer visual representations of organic keyword ranking difficulty, with colors and numbers detailing the metrics for each individual keyword.

Each tool also highlights competing sites that are currently ranking for the keywords; enabling you to work out which keywords are actually worth chasing.

It’s worth noting that Serpstat offers an interesting feature called “Missing Keywords”. This highlights competitor pages ranking in the top 10 ranking positions for keywords you’re  missing, enabling to potentially get an easy advantage when you need it.

Sort Keywords by Topic
Again, both tools include this feature, though under different names.

In SEMrush, you’ll find this under “keyword magic tool”; in Serpstat, this is simply named “keyword clustering tool.”

Both tool features allow users to easily divide and filter keywords by topic, intention, and implication.

Serpstat arguably has the edge in this area as it also analyses meaningful connections between keywords, which are then split into intelligent hierarchies.

It also has a text analytics function which allows for a content analysis of your site alongside competitor websites.

Comparing APIs
Both Serpstat and SEMrush offer incredibly powerful APIs that allow for nearly infinite data analysis.

By subscribing to Serpstat’s Plan B at $69 per month, you get full access to its API with no extra costs (though account limits may apply).

You can get similar features with SEMrush, but must subscribe to its business plan, which currently runs $399.95 per month.

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First Virgin Experience From Mumbai | Real First Time Virgin Sex Story

Hello friend i am Sanjay, 23 years old boy from Mumbai. It is a real story happened 1 month back. Firstly let me explain about me i am 24 years with height 5.10 i just don’t want to boost myself i am shy average looking guy with slim body but somehow manageable to grab attention…..I am looking for girl between 18 to 26 for having good relation like have friends to share each and everything even though sexual feeling.

I am graduate from A.P. came to Mumbai for job search i was staying with my uncle and aunt in there flat both of them are software employees use to go to work in morning 9 am and return at 6 pm in this mean while i only use to be at home alone they have no children, my life is very lonely till then i am to Mumbai i don’t have any girlfriend till i came to Mumbai.

Let me come to real story, as it is double bed room flat i have my own room with balcony with glass doors, i use to watch surrounding flats and apartments from my balcony, one afternoon when i am standing in balcony a girl from opposite apartment came out to balcony and drying her cloths i was shocked to see her because she is really friend were pretty girl with slim body, white complexion and height of 5. 7 tight breasts from her top, round shaped good asserts i don’t know much about.

Measurements like (32-34-32) so not mentioned. I was flat by seeing her she was north Indian. Realy gorgeous friends that day for the first time we exchanged the eye contacts unexpectedly but due to my shyness i changed my contact and pretended looking at the other side. That night i was unable to sleep by remembering her….4 days passed like that…..

Every day i was looking for her to come out to watch but due to no luck it took 4 days for me to see her again this time brought up courage and looking into her eyes and wished her by smiling she to replies positively by smile in this way we use to wish each other from one apartment to other apartment but we did not spoke to each other for 10 days. One fine day unexpectedly we met at nearby reliance fresh while shopping; i was with my uncle and aunt so i was not able to dare to speak much

With her i just asked her name… She replied with smile her name and asked me the same and exchanged eyes and smiles and left the place i thought, i missed the chance to speak with her due to presence of my uncle and aunt, i felt bad about the incident.

After 2 days again we met at road and spoke to each and came to know about her that she too in job search and staying with his brother and sister in law like my aunt and uncle they too are employees and she was like me shy girl.. I thought what a coincidence between us and left the place after 1 hour speaking before others notice us. I got a chance to get into opposite apartment why iam saying chance means u people know well flats means watchman use to watch and asks to who’s home i am going so i said chance..

To surprise her i went to her flat and rang bell she opened the door it was good to see her in her blue t-shirt and night track through them her asserts are well revealing; i was struck by seeing her asserts were as she was struck by seeing in front her door. Soon came to sense and said me to get in before any one see i entered into the flat she offered me to sit in sofa and she eagerly asked how did u entered into flat what u said to watch man and so, i said don’t worry i managed myself, after the she offered me drink sat for 1 hour and went on with conversion after the i thought to let get into the sex track and asked about do she have any boyfriends and sensitively dealt to ask her she fucked by any one. I was afraid after asking this question that she will through me of the flat, but she asked have u had sex

Then i said no chance for me till know i said.. She said then how do you think i had sex i too shy girl like you..

I smiled and replied to her even though you are shy but gorgeous girl… She smiled and i dared to ask her kiss but she got angry and said how can u ask me like that we 2 don’t even proposed even till know how do u asked? In this mean while i went near her and kissed on her check she pulled me back.. We sat idle for 2 mints and i felt sorry for thing and explained her about situation i am in “i am not able to control myself by seeing her so near to me.. And frankly explained about how i felt by seeing her in her blue t shirt and track and said her that your top is revealing you breasts to me i can scan you breast and i just want to touch them and sense them ” by these words she felt shame of herself and tried to cover her breasts with pillow but i said already i have scanned why to hide ” she asked me then what

You want…I said i want a good relationship with you and i gave her French kiss she too responded well and we exchanged our tongues for 10 mints and hugged each other and i tried to reveal her breasts she said plz no no no…I said her just to show to me she agreed to show and i was so excited to see her breasts she removed her t-shirt and take off her bra and show me her boobs…….I was shocked to see girls breasts for real, i have no word to speak by seeing them and tried to touch she objected but i convinced her to touch with my hands they felt really soft and good shaped i kissed her and breasts. And massaged for some time here there the real story comes all of sudden bell rang she adjusted herself and went to see from spied eye it is her sister in law she got afraid and said me hide

Some were but no opposition i don’t know much about their flat and unexpectedly i hided down of bed. She opened the door and sister in law asked why it took long; she said she is sleeping.. Sister in law went to her room and got relaxed i was still down of bed but managed to get out after 2 hrs. hiding but while going i was glanced by some members and complained to her brother and sister in law…Then after i did not see her i think “they came to know about this and send her back to her state ”

I felt myself most unluckiest boy in this world for missing such wonderful girl.

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How B2B Buyer Personas Influence Online Marketing Campaigns

The most significant challenge B2B marketers face is in effectively communicating with target audiences and prospective buyers. While we all have goals and objectives for lead generation, brand development, and customer experience as examples, the overarching challenge is making the right decisions to achieve them.

Goals become more complicated to achieve as evolving marketing technology continues to promise an opportunity to target more specifically and create unique customer experiences buyers demand.

B2B buyer personas provide a foundation for accomplishing the research and development of effective online marketing campaigns designed to achieve strategic marketing objectives.

What Are B2B Buyer Personas?

Buyer personas are fictional characters that represent types of users that typically use, evaluate, and authorize the purchase of B2B products and solutions.

In coordination with buyer journey mapping, personas help marketers conceptualize how target audiences may interact with an organization and associated solutions.

Here are additional definitions from around the web:

Ardath Albee & MLT Creative: “A buyer persona is a composite of different factors that affect your buyer and motivate him/her to buy. Your prospect’s buying cycle and buying decisions are situated within a larger context that must be understood in order to motivate his/her buyer behavior.” (source)
Adele Revella: “A buyer persona as an archetype; a composite picture of the real people who buy, or might buy, products like the ones you market, based on what you’ve learned in direct interviews with real buyers.” (source)
For online marketers, buyer personas can provide direction in the channel-specific campaign development.

In this post, we will define how buyer personas can be leveraged for building more effective programs in B2B SEO, PPC, content marketing, and social media.

SEO and PPC Keyword Research

Keyword research is both a fundamental and critical component of search marketing programs; paid and organic. The key to effective keyword research is how understanding target audiences use keywords to discuss client solutions.

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Why Every Business Needs Intelligent Bid Management for Google PPC

In 2019, the paid search bidding process is more complicated than ever. Making accurate and optimized keyword bids is only the first step. There’s also a growing number of bid adjustment options you can utilize to improve the efficacy and efficiency of your campaigns. Automated Google PPC management appears to be the most comprehensive solution to take advantage of these benefits. Intelligent big management is not only preferable to manual CPC calculations, but it’s also completely essential.

The Value of Google Bid Management Technology in 2019

In general, automated bid management involves optimizing your cost-per-click (CPC) for marketing campaigns. This can be done on different advertising verticals, including PPC and display advertising. Automating the bid management process offers a number of benefits for advertisers. Here’s an overview of why every business needs intelligent PPC bid management today:


Make Full Use of Data

Google Ads is constantly introducing new dimensions that advertisers can use to optimize their campaigns. There’s dayparting, devices, geographic locations, demographics, audiences, and more. Within geotargeting, there’s neighborhoods, zip codes, cities, regions and states. With audience targeting there’s also remarketing, affinity audiences, in-market audiences, similar audiences, and more. You can use these dimensions for direct targeting or simply adjust bids to prioritize certain audiences and locations. To take full advantage of this, you could end up making more than 10,000 bids on a single account. This is only possible if you can keep up with data analysis and discover all these opportunities as they arise.

It doesn’t matter how many data scientists you have on your PPC team, or how much time/money you spend on bid adjustments – there’s no way to take full advantage of these data opportunities using manual bidding. Intelligent bid management uses artificial intelligence and machine learning to process large volumes of relevant bidding data. 

A third-party bid management tool like QuanticMind is also uniquely positioned to utilize other important data to make more precise bidding decisions. Google relies solely on data from the search bid landscape and other Google properties to make bids. QuanticMind considers this and other relevant business data, such as: 

Cost data from publishers

Historical revenue and click information

Campaign, Keyword type, Match Type,

Revenue data (offline, lifetime value, other in-house metrics, etc.) 

Making full use of available data helps advertisers make more targeted bidding decisions to optimize their campaigns and beat the competition.


React to Market Changes

Google automated bidding and third-party bid management tools can make informed decisions faster than individual PPC managers ever could. And the truth is the bid landscape is constantly changing. Even if you make accurate bids based on the latest data insights, it will quickly become irrelevant because of changes in the bid landscape. Industry trends, seasonality, and competitor changes all impact how much you need to spend targeting keywords and audiences to reach your business goals.

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Industrial Blogging Lessons Learned from Working with Technical SMEs

My clients often ask me to write posts for their industrial blogs. This requires me to work very closely with engineers and technical SMEs (Subject Matter Experts) on a daily basis for creating content. I have learned some important lessons about blogging that are specific to this technical and industrial audience.

Editorial calendar: This may sound like content marketing 101 but let me tell you why it is so important for industrial blogs. At a recent discovery meeting, I received little to no response when I asked a group of engineers about their customers’ challenges that we could blog about. I was expected to do the industry research and come back with a list of topics. Ideas for blog posts just flowed after I presented my findings. I kid you not; I now have weekly blogging topics lined up until the second week of November for this manufacturing client.

SME Interviews: I have found it a lot easier to write technical blog posts if I start by interviewing SMEs. I have to do my homework and come prepared with a list of intelligent questions to ask. Engineers can spot a novice quickly and they are not particularly patient with people trying to interview them about a topic that the interviewer knows very little about.

Be a ruthless editor: Writing copy based on interviews is one thing but the skill that I find most useful is editing. It takes time and understanding of the subject matter to publish blog posts that are compelling stories that educate and engage readers. One caveat I have discovered is that there is a fine balance between being a marketer and a technical content editor. What may sound geeky to a marketer may be just the right content for a technical audience.

Become an SEO expert: You’ve got to learn most everything there is to know about keyword research, on-page SEO and internal linking with keyword-rich anchor text. There is no point in publishing a bunch of unoptimized blog posts that your target audience will never find in search engines. SEO and social marketing skills are what separate a content marketing expert from a copywriter.

Add a touch of humor: This one is a myth buster. Contrary to popular belief, engineers do have a sense of humor and appreciate wit. Just don’t go overboard and try to be too clever and cutesy. Clever wordsmithing will only take you so far if your content lacks technical accuracy and substance.

For more on this topic, you may want to read my earlier post, “How to Coax Content Out of Engineers.”

As a Mechanical Engineer myself, I find it easier to interact with technical SMEs but I still have to go in there prepared to get my job done. I know I couldn’t just wing it after all these years and having written hundreds of industrial blog posts.

What has been your experience interacting with technical SMEs for writing blog posts and creating content for industrial marketing?

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Dynamic Search Ads: Bridging the PPC and SEO Gap

Dynamic Search Ads, or DSAs, aren’t exactly new in the world of Google Ads. However, the way they leverage SEO data despite being part of paid search makes them an interesting facet of any ads campaign, and for that reason, we decided to discuss them in more depth.

What are Dynamic Search Ads?

To understand Dynamic Search Ads, you’ll need to know a bit of Google Ads history. Way back in 2011, Google unveiled a new technology called Dynamic Keyword Insertion. DKI let Google automatically insert a searcher’s query into the ad’s headline. Ideally, this would ensure that the automatically-generated ad looked highly relevant to the original query and increase click-through rates, all without any additional work on the advertiser’s part. 

If the original query exceeded the maximum character limit Google allowed for headlines, the ad would show a default headline set in advance by the advertiser. DKI ads continue to exist and have seen a degree of success, though some advertisers have found that user search queries, while they might be perfectly serviceable as inputs into a search bar, don’t always convey the professionalism (or proper spelling) desired in ad copy.

Dynamic Search Ads are like a souped-up version of DKI ads, in which Google has control over not only the ad’s headline but of the keywords that trigger each ad as well. DSAs allow advertisers to skip the arduous task of creating long lists of keywords to cover every possible way someone could search for their business. Instead of generating dozens of variations of keywords like “bakery near me” and “bakery in New Jersey” and “where can I buy cupcakes”, the advertiser simply has to let Google know some basic information about their product, and Google does the rest.

Launching a DSA campaign is incredibly simple. All an advertiser has to do is specify which pages should have traffic sent to them and provide the copy to be displayed under the custom headline for each landing page. Google will then use its algorithms to determine which keywords should trigger the ads and what the ad headline should read. The result is a relevant, highly-tailored ad that requires almost no work to set up.

When I first learned about DSAs, I was not sold. They sounded too good to be true and based on my experiences with DKI, I felt justified in my skepticism. After all, I’ve spent years learning how to manage PPC campaigns, honing my ad copy skills and launching more keywords than I could possibly count. There was no way that an automated system could emulate my process. After all, what substitute is there for years of experience?

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What is: pay-per-click, or PPC?

a system used to set prices for online advertisements on a search engine or other website, by which the advertiser pays a small fee to the website publisher each time a user clicks on the advertisement.

Ever since the digital marketing boom began, marketers have been scrambling to figure out the most effective ways to connect with consumers. Search advertising, most prominently Google Ads, quickly became the preferred strategy. Pay-per-click (PPC advertising) is a form of paid digital marketing where advertisers pay a fee each time their ad is clicked.

Marketers have expanded their strategies to include other channels and tactics. But pay-per-click, PPC, has continued to be an essential digital marketing tactic across all brands and strategy.

What is pay-per-click?

Pay-per-click campaigns are usually synonymous with paid search campaigns. This is where the advertiser pays a fee each time someone clicks on an ad, rather than paying per-impression or per-acquisition.

So is paid search and pay-per-click the same thing?

For simplicity’s sake: Yes! Although if you researched that exact question, you’d get more vague results. Pay-per-click, keyword advertising, paid search advertising—they’re all pretty much the same thing except for a few tactics that don’t fit within each other (and that aren’t used as often). As mentioned, Google Ads is the most widely-used platform for PPC campaigns, but advertisers should also keep it in mind to consider other search engines and platforms like Bing or Amazon, aka sponsored posts.

So how is pay-per-click a digital marketing metric?

Simply put: Pay-per-click (PPC) is a digital marketing metric where the advertiser pays a set amount per click.

The goal of PPC is to lead the person viewing it to click through to the advertiser’s website or app, where that visitor can complete a valuable action, such as purchasing a product. Monitoring and reaching an ideal PPC goal can help you optimize all your campaigns.

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While search engine optimization (SEO) has become a common term in the online marketing lexicon, many folks will struggle to tell you exactly how SEO helps bring relevant traffic to the client—and marketers are at a severe disadvantage without that knowledge.

6 facts about high-ranking SEO content or relationship to technology is rapidly evolving, and Google’s SEO algorithms have steadily adapted in response to our behavior.

The good news is SEO analysts from across the web regularly gather some pretty revealing statistical data about which key factors help or hinder the performance of an article, page, or post.

So what are these SEO factors, and why should content creators and marketers pay attention to them if they want to increase their digital presence and performance? Here are six high-impact areas to focus on with SEO efforts.

Mobile Friendliness

Content Length

SEO Generates Leads

Long-Tail Keywords Perform Best

Video Content Is Growing

Images Improve Rankings

#1. Mobile-Friendliness

Fact: In mid-2016, mobile search overtook desktop search as the dominant Google search vehicle.

As such, there’s been extra focus on making sites more mobile-friendly over the past few years. In fact, Google rewards mobile-friendly sites with a higher search engine results page (SERP) position and penalizes the sites that aren’t.

In order to stay in the mix, a website must be designed to make its material friendly for mobile users. This is no longer just a matter of user experience. Without mobile-friendly design, your online presence will take a hit and it will be reflected in your traffic numbers!

According to Statista, mobile web traffic accounted for 38.7% of total North American web traffic in November 2018. If well over one-third of potential customers are visiting your site from their phones, it has to be easy to navigate!

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10 Digital Marketing Terms Every Successful Entrepreneur Knows

There are a million digital marketing terms, acronyms, and lingoes that get thrown around all over the web. These can become so commonplace that it’s almost embarrassing to ask what they are at this point. 

Don’t worry, pretty much everyone is unsure about at least one of these terms, and there’s nothing wrong with missing out on one or two. 

We’re here to give you 10 must-know terms so you’re up-to-date.

10 Digital Marketing Terms You Need to Know

Some of these terms are absolutely essential, so you may already know them. That said, we’ll have to cover them just in case. 

1. SEO

Search engine optimization is one of the most important elements of digital marketing. It’s the process of making your site look good in the eyes of a search engine so that you can rank highly in the results. 

Many of the terms in this article will be related to SEO.

2. Keywords

You probably know the general term “keyword.” In terms of optimization, though, it relates to the words that users put into search engines. 

You should research the most popular keywords in your niche (we’ll cover that term next), and create your content with those keywords laced throughout your writing. 

3. Niche

This term is another one that has meaning outside of digital marketing. Generally, a niche is an area of content. 

So, your niche will generally pertain to the kind of content you have on your site and the other sites that also create that sort of content. You should look to the successful sites in your niche for inspiration on how to market your own site. 

4. Backlinking

Backlinks are links to your site from another site. If search engines were like a democratic election, backlinks would serve as votes in your favor. Links from high-power sites have more influence than those from unpopular ones. 

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Finding a Digital Marketing Firm: The Top Questions to Ask Before Hiring

50.8% of the global population is already online. Roughly speaking, that’s about 4 billion internet users. Without digital marketing, you’re missing out on a big chunk of your potential audience.

With a professional digital marketing firm on your side, you can reach out to this audience and start growing your business! But how do you choose the right one?

Here are five questions to ask when searching for the best marketing companies. 

What Previous Clients Have You Worked With?

First, test the agency’s experience. Have they worked with another company within your industry before? How did it go?

Find digital agencies that have experience with your industry. That way, you can skip the guesswork. They’ll already know what works.

Make sure the agency is equipped to handle your company’s specific needs, too.

Search for an agency that offers experience specific to your industry and needs. Working with them will become a lot easier as a result. 

What Tactics Do You Use?

Some agencies are versatile and offer a long list of tactics. Others perfect the process for a single campaign. 

Ask if they offer a range of digital marketing services or specialize.

For example, Ignite Digital offers a number of services to help businesses grow.

You might need specific help, such as social media marketing or a new website. When choosing a marketing firm, make sure their capabilities and expertise align with your marketing goals.

How Will You Help Me Achieve My Goals?

Marketers who plan their projects are 356% more likely to have a successful campaign. Before you start working with an agency, make sure they have a plan and process in place.

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Get a Degree in the Internet of Things

The IntSAG_Twitter_MEME_go_back_to_school_880x440_Nov19ernet of Things (IoT) is booming; millions of sensors and devices are being installed around the world as you read this.  Your company, your home, your pet – all of these can be part of the connected ecosystem called the IoT.
But Rome was not built in a day, and so it goes with IoT - someone must build and support IoT projects, making sure they are relevant to the business needs and stay that way into the future. That someone must have engineering skills, IoT platform experience and the ability to apply analytics to the data that springs from the project.

Who can do all this? It could be you.

 A few years ago, James Cook University (JCU) in Cairns, Australia realized the potential of the IoT and decided to educate students in the subject, so that they could get jobs in the booming IoT industry. 

It designed a degree program, officially called Electrical Systems and IoT Engineering, the first of its kind.  And the very first class of students is about to receive a Bachelors’ degree at the end of this term.

JCU wanted to teach students about the entire IoT ecosystem, from collection to communication to analysis. After gaining accreditation from the Engineers Australia, JCU organized the course with a three-pronged approach to teaching IoT:

First, electrical engineering courses give students the ability to understand the physical, sensor side of IoT.
Second, a hands-on IoT platform offers them the chance to design and test different real-life scenarios.
And, third, Big Data courses teach them how to apply analytics tools to their IoT data.
To set up the program, JCU needed to partner with a technology provider that could not only provide the IoT platform but could also work with the university to educate the students - and help JCU with IoT-related projects. JCU evaluated several vendors – both paid-for and for free - before deciding on Cumulocity IoT.

JCU chose Cumulocity IoT because it is powerful and versatile and can manage a large number of IoT sensors - as well as facilitate IoT big data analytics. Software AG experts run hands-on Cumulocity IoT workshops during the final year of the IoT capstone project, working with real sensors on real-life projects such as environmental and agricultural monitoring.

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4 Principles for Effective Lead Management

Lead management is part of any business that has leads — that is, any business that requires consideration before making a purchase decision.

There are many organizations that lack a cross-functional process that’s required in order to manage leads. It’s not that they don’t want to have a process, it’s that the organization’s leadership just hasn’t made it a focus. Sad but true.

In order to have a lead management process that works, you need these four components:

Shared Vocabulary

Set Expectations

Clear Accountability

Constant Communication

Shared Vocabulary

Seems simple, but if you think about it, makes complete sense. Whenever you’re part of a group, or a team, or a family even, you tend to make up words, or use phrases, or acronyms, that don’t mean much to those who are outside of the group, or team, or family. We do this because it allows us to have a tighter bond with the people that we spend a lot of our waking lives with — but at the same time, you wouldn’t use that same language outside of your close circle because you know you’re not going to be understood.

Yet, when Marketing talks about what a “Lead” is and when Sales talks about what a “Lead” is, they are talking about different things.

This, of course, creates a lot of confusion since two distinct groups use the same word to mean different things, and the result is a miscommunication resulting in mutual frustration.

Example:

Marketing Definition: Lead — A person with a valid email address that has expressed an interest in a product/service

Sales Definition: Lead  — A person from a company in my territory who talked to me at an event.

You solve this problem by bringing different groups together and defining the key terms, words, and acronyms that you use in your daily lives so that everyone has proper context and understanding of the language, and then language becomes the foundation on which you build everything else on.

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Are You Making These PPC Mistakes? 10+ Bizible PPC Fails… And How We Fixed Them

We’re a fast-growing marketing team with the goal to be constantly improving our marketing output. We’ve added new strategies and new marketing channels to our arsenal to match the evolution and maturation of our company; however, because we have to be so scrappy (startup), things sometimes do fall through the cracks.

We recently went through and audited our paid media (mostly PPC) and found that there were many ways in which we could improve. Here are some of our fails, as well as what we’re doing to make our paid media more effective.

Mistake #1: Using ungated content in search promotion

By making a search query that delivers your search ad, the searcher is already showing some degree of consideration and intent. If the search is for your company or a competitor, they’ve already “discovered” you; if the search is for content that delivers your blog post ad, they have a specific problem or question that’s relevant to your solution; if the search is for the category, they already know the area that they are interested in. Because they are typically already past the point of awareness or discovery, search tends to be a middle-funnel activity. Therefore, we should match where they are in the funnel by targeting them with middle-of-the-funnel content, such as ebooks and whitepapers -- gated content.

Of course there are exceptions to this rule (perhaps a competitor comparison page on your website), but in general, search campaigns have a lead gen goal, so use gated content.

Mistake #2: Using a single “brand” campaign on search and display
A brand campaign is a brand campaign is a brand campaign. Right? Wrong. We realized that we were using the same targeting for our Bizible brand campaign for both search and display through AdWords.

Of course you already have separate search and display campaigns for lead gen, but even with brand awareness campaigns it’s important to think about the different contexts that your audience will be viewing your ads. Viewers of your display ad will have a lot less intent, so you need to be thinking of higher-funnel offers and something more broadly eye-catching (not just visually).

By creating two separate brand campaigns, you give yourself the flexibility to set different budgets, experiment with, and optimize for each ad type.

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Three Golden Rules for Optimizing Customer Experience

The most important element in your brand image isn’t your logo, tagline, color palette, or mission statement. It’s the customer experience (CX) people have when doing business with you.

According to Gartner, “Providing a better customer experience (CX) is no longer just a competitive advantage; it’s a matter of survival. More than 80% of brands surveyed…said their success is mostly or entirely dependent on CX.”

CX encompasses the full range of customer impressions and touchpoints: your pricing, the quality and reliability of your product, ease of doing business with you, ease of finding how-to information, and of course the quality of your customer service.

Steve Olenski recently questioned if customer service is the same as CX. It’s not, but customer service is sort of the last line of defense; customers are contacting your customer service team because of a breakdown in some other aspect of CX (being overcharged, delivered the wrong item, having a bad experience with one of your employees, etc.).

Customer service starts with getting the basics right. Hire customer service reps (CSRs) with the language, people, and technical skills needed to do the job well. This is not just a customer-facing role, it’s a role in which the customers being faced are often unhappy and possibly even on the edge of leaving. It’s not the place to skimp on spending.

Offer multiple customer service channels, including phone, email, chat, and Twitter. And unless you have a monopoly, like your electric utility, cable provider, or Facebook (the ultimate scavenger hunt challenge is to find any phone number that connects you directly to an employee within Facebook), make it easy for people to find and reach your customer service department.

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Wikipedia And The Wiki Utopia, Revisited

Many organizations then started placing high hopes that all their knowledge management woes would have found their savior. If Wikipedia can be as good as Britannica, we could replace all our outdated corporate knowledge repositories with wikis. The wisdom of crowds would run its magic, and we’d have high quality and up-to-date content we can rely upon.

Image by Octavio Rojas via Flickr

Six years later, we can safely say that the predicted wiki utopia never materialized. Was that just a collective hallucination caused by too many consultants who drank a lot of the Kool-Aid 2.0? How come that Wikipedia is even more successful today than back then (6th most accessed site worldwide), but a good chunk of our corporate wikis are moribund and abandoned, with content that’s often worse than the ones created by our decades-old, expert-based, top-down traditional processes? Was Wikipedia just the exception that proved the rule? Is the Britannica model really outdated? Keep reading, and you may find that the actual answer is a bit of the above, but with a significant twist.

Before showing any numbers to show the success of Wikipedia, just take a look at Wikistream, an impressive visualization of what’s happening in Wikipedia right now. Here’s a snapshot as a teaser, but I highly recommend you to click in the link above for the real deal:

As you can see, at any given moment there is an incredible number of editors frantically updating Wikipedia. Thus, it’s no wonder that enough of interesting and high-quality content is produced to convince more than 400 million unique people to visit it every month. Here’s Google’s estimate on the number of monthly visitors for the top sites on the web (excluding themselves):

Now, take a look at this second stat: in the English version of Wikipedia, you have approximately 23 editors (generously defined as people with 5 or more contributions) per million speakers (1.5 billion, counting the ones with English as a second language). If I did the math right, that means approximately 35,000 editors who contributed to almost 4 million articles there.

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Baidu PPC Versus Google AdWords: 8 Key Differences

B2B marketers familiar with search engine advertising on Google AdWords will likely find it easier to understand Baidu PPC. They share many of similarities, such as text and display ads, a cost-per-click (CPC) price system is based on the market bids, and similar account architecture.

However there are key differences between Baidu PPC and Google AdWords as well.

To help B2B marketers gain a better sense of the nuances of Baidu PPC, I’ve come up with more than a dozen distinctions between the two paid ad platforms ranging from account and settings to management and optimization.

In this post, I’ll first outline the eight ways Baidu PPC differs from AdWords from an account and settings perspective. Next month, we’ll look at some differences in account management and optimization.

Let’s get started!

Paid Advertising Products
AdWords provides a range of paid advertising products, such as display, text, search, shopping, video, and app ads.

In Baidu PPC, B2B marketers can manage a much broader range of advertising products, which includes display ads, text search ads, information feed ads, as well as unique products offerings, like Brand Zone, and Baidu Knowledge.

Information Feed Ads

Launched in 2016, this type of feed flow ads are mixed with organic content and are displayed in content-driven Baidu products, such as Baidu Forum, Baidu News, and more.

Brand Zone

A special product available only to the brand owner, Brand Zone is a space to showcase and introduce the company or brand. It often includes links to the company’s website, news, signature products, and promotion information.

This type of ad normally ranks to the top position on the SERP, and pushes down all the competing ads.

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The Path to Great PPC for Search Marketers

Given the modern data environment, improving your PPC results will increasingly rely on processing quality data. Going from good to great PPC performance involves collecting and processing bigger data sets and using machine learning to find and select the best bids. But, despite what you may fear, humans are an integral part of this process as well. Machines can’t do it alone.

You’re a talented search marketer, but you want to constantly improve, grow, and stay sharp on the latest techniques in digital marketing. Whether you’re the hands-on owner of a SEM program day-to-day, or you’ve stepped away to think more broadly about your digital acquisition strategy, the goal is still the same: turn your PPC channel into an efficient and predictable revenue driver. 

But, once you’ve started hitting the ceiling, it’s time to put more of your data to work.

Collecting More Data from PPC

I’m going to assume you’re a pretty advanced search marketer, so you’ve got your ducks in a row regarding your program structure. This means you probably have strong campaign build-out, highly relevant ad groups matched with ad copy and keywords that are tested, kept clean, and aligned with a good landing page experience.

You’re also probably driving some significant volume. If PPC is a truly pivotal channel–generating forty, sixty, or eighty percent of your revenue–you’re willing to spend a lot with search engines. Lots of dollars leading to lots of clicks and revenue.

When you’re spending tens of thousands (or hundreds of thousands) of budget dollars on search engine marketing, you earn a valuable byproduct: data.

This data is a gold mine! Every click results in some set of actions on your website and some get further down the path towards revenue than others. Beyond that, every click is not only attributed to the keyword, ad, ad group, and campaign, but also to all sorts of attributes and dimensions that provide details about demographics, geographies, and habits.

The intricate customer journeys of the modern era make a “Conversion” in Google Ads worth less – and your own ability to track the path to revenue so much more meaningful. Your data tells a better story, you just need to capture it, unify it, and process it. 

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Why Are URLs So Important?

I recently commented on a LinkedIn post about the power of LinkedIn as a content marketing platform. The gist of the post was that it is rapidly becoming the go-to platform for branded content marketing. I disagreed with the very premise of the post.

I get that LinkedIn has a lot of appeal as a central place to find people. My problem with LinkedIn is I can’t find content in the platform. As if to prove my point, I went looking for the post I commented on and couldn’t find it. After striking out with LinkedIn search, I searched in Google. No luck. I got a lot of results, but none of my numerous queries produced the result I was looking for. And I’m a power user of Google.

Contrast that to Wikipedia: not only is it easy to find content within the platform, Wikipedia articles are all over the first page in Google. You might wonder why this is. Well, some of it is about the content itself, as my colleague and friend Charles Chesnut showed in his maiden post on this platform: The Wikipedia test for content marketing. Beyond the content itself, a big reason for the success of Wikipedia content is findability. This is one of my laws of content strategy:

So why is content so easy to find in Wikipedia and hard to find in LinkedIn? I contend that the URL structure of the two platforms is a key reason. In particular, the semantics of the URLs plays a big part of how search engines index the content, and ultimately rank the content in their indices. LinkedIn’s URLs are organized the way the whole site is: by people’s names. Wikipedia’s URLs are organized primarily by topics.

When people are looking for content, more often than not, they search by topic. If you study search queries as I do for a living, this would become obvious fairly early on. Yes, people sometimes search for people, when they are looking for an expert on a topic they already know about. But if they are just getting into a field of study, they search by topic. The vast majority of queries are by people who are learning about things outside of their areas of expertise.

 my research, about 80% of queries relevant to our audience are what we call informational queries: Composed of keywords about generic topics. About 15% of the queries we track are what we call navigational queries: composed of keywords about brands, people, and company names. About 5% of queries are transactional: composed of product names and model numbers. I’ve been tracking query trends for 10 years. Topics come and go, but these percentages don’t change much.

Besides the ranking bias search engines have for high-quality topical content, one reason Wikipedia dominates in search is its URL semantics are almost entirely based on topics. Search engines organize content in their indices by keywords. Keywords are grouped as sets of topics. When search engines crawl a site, they look at the URL structure to see how it lines up to their topical hierarchy in their indices.

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