Q4 is here, and it’s time to ensure your paid search programs drive the success you need for a strong finish in 2021. 

Two short years ago, typical steep discounts and strong promotions were big factors in driving Q4 e-commerce success. Then COVID hit and upended the world. Then 2021 hit with massive strains in supply chains and escalating shipping costs. These factors mean marketers cannot assume vast inventories or even alternative products to satisfy their customers. 

Take, for example, the auto industry. Dealerships cannot get adequate inventories of new vehicles. They are pre-selling allotted vehicles before they even hit the lot, and they wish they had more cars to satisfy huge demand, including for used vehicles. It’s more crucial than ever to reduce ad waste and connect a buyer’s search with THE specific car they are searching for online. Similar challenges confront countless other industries in 2021. 

To win during Q4, your PPC campaigns need to be far more responsive to real-time inventory and other stressors that are flummoxing many marketers. Here are three tips for executing on the new game plan that can help you win as supply chains wreak havoc on your competitors’ campaigns.

The three steps outlined below won’t solve every problem in Q4, but these steps can help you conquer some of the most pressing challenges marketers are facing in the coming few months: 

Step 1: Connect your ads to real-time supply chain and inventory data

After all, you can only sell what you’ll ACTUALLY have on hand or on the way. By connecting real-time data right into a PPC workflow, marketers can pivot quickly and automatically when one line of product sells out, and a much-delayed shipment finally arrives. 

Automated ad creation instantly reflects the new inventory and makes it possible to serve up ads for only the items you can actually deliver. And when automating ads from inventory, there’s no need to stop at simple text ads. Extend the automation to also create RSAs (Responsive Search Ads), RDAs (Responsive Display Ads with images), and DSAs (Dynamic Search Ads). 

Next, use the automation to add hyper-relevant targeting criteria like keywords to serve ads against product-specific searches, including for users who are searching for attributes that align with your inventory data (in the instance of vehicles, think about make, model, color, year, mileage, etc. – or size, color, and other attributes relating to apparel or other products). 

This alignment of inventory data and your PPC programs also allows for automated creation of ETAs and DSAs along with the most popular ad extensions. With RSAs becoming the default ad format, this is a great time to add RSA to your whole account and align your inventory data with ad creation. 

Another nice outcome – when inventory is gone, ads for that product stop, which helps eliminate wasted spend (and frustration for customers). This simple first step gets you on the right track, and you should see benefits quickly. 

Step 2: Optimize your feed to show better ads

While structured data like that found in spreadsheets is commonly used by PPC teams, automatically turning that data into ads may present some problems, especially when the data feed wasn’t built specifically with PPC ads in mind. The problem is that data may be formatted inconsistently, incorrectly, or certain required fields to run ads are simply missing. This is when the need arises to optimize the feed data, a process that must be automated with rules if the advertiser hopes to gain the full time-saving benefits of data-driven ads. 

The data advertisers have access to usually originates from a shopping cart system and may not follow all the strict requirements for what Google needs for ads. For example, the product titles may be too long to fit in an RSA headline component or to fit the title element of a shopping ad. Or the product category data may not map cleanly to Google’s product categories. This is when you will need to optimize the feed before using it to advertise.

The Feed Optimization tool simplifies things like:

• Creating product titles that follow Google’s best practice guidelines. Many data sources are not inherently Google-friendly. Feed Optimization is designed around those guidelines. 
• Standardizing attributes such as colors and sizes. For example, simply replacing all instances of “M” with “Medium” or replacing unusual color names such as “cardinal” with more common references such as “red” result in more impression volume because your keywords are better matched to how users search. 

Think of the impact on automatic creation of relevant ads when the source data is aligned properly. Cleaner inputs = more powerful outputs. 

Step 3: Use Google’s Drafts and Experiments to explore what works best. 

With new data-driven ad strategies in place, it’s time to start testing what works best and prove to your stakeholders that the new strategy is paying off. Drafts and Experiments is a feature-rich tool from Google that offers a lot of horsepower for search marketers but isn’t the most intuitive, fluid add-on in the Google environment. For example, monitoring experiments in Google across more than one account or across multiple experiments can be cumbersome. 

Free scripts or PPC tools like those from Optmyzr can help you see all experiments across accounts in more user-friendly ways, with results and recommendations served up on a single page. The streamlined views via Optmyzr make it much easier to monitor the experiments and take actions according to the results. 

The best PPC practitioners are really good at experimenting. They test, learn, and iterate – and the faster they can do all of that, the more they leave competitors in the dust. 

Masters of automation & optimization become masters of PPC

Paid search pros benefit when they are in the greatest control of the automations at their disposal. The steps noted above can really help position PPC pros to tackle the ever-evolving challenges that confront marketers in Q4 of 2021. The challenges are big, but so are the opportunities to drive exceptional results. Approach Q4 methodically and think automation and optimization at every turn:

• Connect real-time supply chain and inventory data with PPC ads
• Supercharge your data with feed optimization tools that sanitize and standardize the info your PPC management system needs for higher-performing ads
• Experiment, test, react and optimize faster if you want to grow faster

Remember – focus on using automations to remove those task-heavy activities of PPC from your plate. Those who master the automations and then use powerful tools that further free up time and energy for more strategic endeavors are the ones who will have the advantage in the daily battle for paid search dominance. 

We’d love to talk to you 1:1 and give you a demo of how Optmyzr and Campaign Automator go beyond platform-level automations. Empowered PPC pros are the ones who will win! Talk to us about how to get that empowerment right on your desktop. We even offer free trials so you can get started without risk.

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Google Search Console’s public-facing testing tools will be aligned more closely to the URL Inspection tool, the company announced today. Google said it is updating these tools’ “designs and improving features to be fully aligned with the URL Inspection tool.”

Which tools are impacted. Google said this is impacting specifically the AMP, Mobile Friendly, and Rich Results testing tools.

What is changing. Google is updating the design and improving some of the features of these three public-facing tools. Specifically, these fields will be both on the public-facing tools and the URL inspection tool:

• Page availability – Whether Google was able to crawl the page, when it was crawled, or any obstacles that it encountered when crawling the URL.
• HTTP headers – The HTTP header response returned from the inspected URL.
• Page screenshot – The rendered page as seen by Google.
• Paired AMP inspection, Inspect both canonical and AMP URL.

What it looks like. Google shared this screenshot of the rich results public testing tool and the new design and features:

Why we care. This should help you align what you are reporting on between the various Google tools. Just this morning Google said a discrepancy between the URL inspection tool and the crawl status reports may cause confusion. Having all these tools more aligned will lead to less confusion and a more efficient use of your time.

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In February, Microsoft launched Smart Pages, a free website builder service to help small businesses that may not have had websites. This was critical during the pandemic as more businesses were essentially required to be online. However, many SMBs don’t have the know-how or the funds to commission a brand new website. Based on customer feedback, Microsoft announced new features for the Smart Pages service this week.

Publish a Smart Pages website with no social and advertising tools required. “With Smart Pages standalone mode, you can create, edit, and publish your website for free — no payment information required. We know that not every business with a web presence is prepared to advertise online and want to give everyone the access to Smart Pages,” wrote Will Rivitz, Program Manager, and Cristiano Ventura Sr. Product Marketing Manager. If business owners choose to partake in Microsoft Advertising later, they can easily sign up when they’re ready.

New analytics features to figure out what works (and what needs tweaking). The new Smart Pages reporting feature allows marketers to track pageviews, clicks, and more all within the platform. “By tracking these metrics over time, you’ll see how the improvements and edits you make affect your customers’ experiences,” said Rivitz and Ventura.

Bing Place integration for local businesses. Marketers will be able to create a new Smart Pages website directly from their Bing Places account and integrate the two properties. “Customers viewing your business on Bing Places will be able to go directly to your Smart Page, where you can show even more information,” according to the announcement.

Why we care. Many small businesses operate without a website, utilizing Facebook pages and local listings as their “hub” for customers, but having your own property is critical to controlling your messaging, optimizing to reach your target audience, and driving in more critical traffic and potential customers. These updates open up the Microsoft Smart Pages website builder to help even more SMBs create an owned online presence and optimize it to drive more qualified leads and customers.

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Google has just published two new help documents to help publishers control what Google shows in the search results for the title and description of the listing. Also, Google introduced a new term for the title of a search result, “title link.”

Control your title links in search results. The first document is named control your title links in search results and it first defines what a “title link” is. A title link “is the title of a search result on Google Search and other properties (for example, Google News) that links to the web page.”

Google then uses a screenshot to point to the title link:

The document then goes through best practices for writing <title> elements, how Google creates title links for the search results, how to avoid common issues with <title> elements, and how to submit feedback to Google on this topic.

As a reminder, in August, Google made a change to the title links that upset a number of publishers, Google then explained why and scaled it back a bit.

Check out the full help document over here.

Control your snippets in search results. The second new help document is named control your snippets in search results and it first defines what a snippet is. A snippet “is the description or summary part of search result on Google Search and other properties (for example, Google News).”

Google then uses a screenshot to point to the snippet:

The document then goes through how snippets are created, the differences between rich results and meta description tags, how to prevent snippets or adjust snippet length, and the best practices for creating meta descriptions.

Check out the full help document over here.

What changed. What changed with the help documents is that Google made two separate documents, instead of having these in a single document. Google also added the term title links, added examples of how Google adjust title links and other minimal changes to the text.

Why we care. These documents should provide additional clarity on how Google shows your search result snippets in its search results and how you can better control what comes up in Google Search. Also, I always found it awkward writing about the title in the search results, so having a defined name for it, i.e. “title link,” makes it easier.

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Search Engine Land’s daily brief features daily insights, news, tips, and essential bits of wisdom for today’s search marketer. If you would like to read this before the rest of the internet does, sign up here to get it delivered to your inbox daily.

Good morning, Marketers, does this morning’s newsletter seem a bit off to you? It does to me…

Carolyn Lyden, our Director of Search Content, is off part of this week and the day I write the newsletter has been moved to the Friday slot – so everything just seems off to me. For me, having a consistent and strict routine helps me do my job better and more efficiently. 

The same is true with SEO — consistency is key and to some, like Google’s John Mueller, the number one piece of SEO advice is to be consistent. Why? The goal with SEO is to not confuse Google by sending mixed, inconsistent signals. Make sure your navigation and URL structure match what you tell Google in your XML sitemap file and canonical tags or hreflang attributes. Make sure what you are showing your users is the same as what you are telling Google Search.

Consistency is key for SEO in that anything you can do to clearly define your site to search will help you rank better. The same is true in life, the more consistent you are with your family, your children, your business, your clients, the more they can all learn to rely and trust you. You need to earn Google’s trust too so that your site can perform its best in search.

Barry Schwartz,
Feeling less consistent today…

Google Search Console rich results status reports errors are more actionable

Google announced it has added a new set of detailed errors to the rich results reports in Google Search Console for some sites. These are called the rich results status reports and you will see a report only if Search Console has data for that rich result type on your site and Search Console implements a report for that type.

“The key is that it’s not new errors, just better details on a bunch of cross type errors,” Ryan Levering of Google said, “These are things that may have been exposed in SDTT but we haven’t had in reports yet. These are very common errors and now they should be more actionable.”

There are five new errors that were also added, they include: Invalid attribute string length

Invalid attribute enum value, Invalid object, Type conversion failed and Out of numeric range. 

Read more here.

Google announces the new Analytics 360

On Thursday, Google announced a revamped version of Analytics 360, the company’s suite of products designed for enterprise-level companies, which builds on Google Analytics 4 as a foundation. The new features include the ability to create product line sub-properties, custom user roles and larger caps on dimensions, audiences and conversion types.

Why we care. Google Analytics 4 is the company’s vision for the future of analytics, and the new Analytics 360 is that same vision, but for enterprise-level organizations. The features Google announced emphasize flexibility and scalability, which may help the tool meet the needs of more businesses.

Read more here.

New bug impacts AMP links in Google Search for iOS 15 devices

Since the release of iOS 15, Apple’s latest mobile operating system, some have begun to notice that when you click from the Google Search results to a publishers site, you won’t be landing on the AMP URL anymore. Instead, you are taken to the main URL or even the publisher’s mobile app (if you have it installed on your device).

This is a bug and Google’s Danny Sullivan said this will be resolved soon. “It’s a bug specific to iOS 15 that we’re working on. We expect it will be resolved soon,” Sullivan said on Twitter. 

Sadly, this is not a feature and AMP will still be the default URL for mobile searches, over the site’s main URL or app deep link URL. Of course, you have the right to remove AMP URLs from your site and many publishers have been doing that since the Page experience update rollout finished and AMP URLs are no longer required for top stories or other Google surfaces.

Read more here.

John Mueller’s cryptic tweet spins off penalty speculation

Above is a screenshot of what John Mueller, a Google search advocate, posted on Twitter the other day. SEOs, including myself, went off on speculating what this tweet can mean. Did it declare Google is going after a new link scheme with a set of new manual actions? Did Google algorithmically release a new version of the Penguin algorithm targeting these types of links. Or maybe John Mueller just liked the movie Blade Runner 2049.

Check out the Twitter thread.

Scaling Bing, the five local pack and healthier Google Ads

Bing scaling. Microsoft released a blog post that shows how Microsoft Bing has scaled to hundreds of petabytes of data and is still able to achieve sub-second data freshness. It is called RocksDB in Microsoft Bing — check it out.

Five pack in local. Google is testing, or maybe it is a bug, a five pack, five local search results in the local pack, instead of the typical three.

Healthier Google Ads. A new Google Ads policy prohibits the marketing of high fat sugar salt foods and beverages to minors in the EU and UK regions. Is Google making their ads healthier?

We’ve curated our picks from across the web so you can retire your feed reader.

• Apple Plan for Cars Uses IPhone to Control A/C, Seats, Radio – Bloomberg
• Final reminder to migrate to the AdMob API – Google Ads Developer Blog
• Google Testing Vertical Line Sitelinks For Search Results And Google Ads – Search Engine Roundtable
• How to Leverage Industry Expert Interviews to Write Quality SEO Content – BruceClay
• Welcome to spooky season – Google Blog

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