For elaboration on these ideas check out the full article on SEOmoz. The article is full of good information.
After slowly rolling out the beta phase of this feature to sample groups, Google announced today that Interest Categories for the display network are now available to all Adwords advertisers. This could prove to be a pretty major addition to Adwords, as Display network advertisers are now able to target audiences based on their interests/ web-surfing behavior.
How Does It Work??
To make a long story short, Google observes the kind of websites a person visits and uses this data to automatically assign certain interest categories to users. You can see what Google has assigned to you by logging into your Gmail account and going to www.google.com/ads/preferences. Google takes several factors into account when assigning interest categories, such as frequency of visits to sites within a category.
So your ads will show to users who have been assigned to your (selected) categories while they surf the internet. This means that regardless of the type of website a user is currently viewing, they can see your ad based on their general interests. In this way behavioral targeting (Interest Categories) differs from Google’s Topic Targeting. With Topic Targeting, ads are applied to specific websites based on topic/relevancy.
Where to Find it in Adwords
Under the Audiences tab, click “+Add audiences” and you will be given a list of interest categories and the estimated amount of users in each category. You can also expand these categories into more detailed sub categories to choose from.
Check these categories and your ads will begin showing to web surfers within them.
If you’re interested in trying this out, check out the article in Adwords help for best practices to follow when setting up Interest Category campaigns.
Danny Sullivan over at Search Engine Land put together an SEO periodic table which outlines specific factors that contribute to a website’s organic rankings. The table does an excellent job of visually simplifying all of the facets of search engine optimization. Main factors include content, html, architecture, links, social, trust, and a website’s personal attributes like location and history.
There are the “On The Page” factors, the things that a publisher can control directly. “Off The Page” factors, which are things you can influence indirectly about how others can help, or harm, your chances of search engine visibility. “Violations” are the things you should avoid, sometimes common mistakes that developers or others might not even realize shouldn’t be done. And “Blocked” covers a new class of not-violations but still things that can be harmful.
In short… they appear to be very effective for most businesses. As we’ll highlight below, a recent post from the Hubspot Blog illustrates the effectiveness of dedicated landing pages. This data is based on a research study performed by Marketing Sherpa.
Wait, What Is a Landing Page?
Here’s a basic definition:
Landing page – a specific page within a website, other than the homepage, that is usually configured to match its content or product offering with a user’s specific search. Landing pages are typically associated with paid ads. They are the pages a user ‘lands on’ after clicking a particular ad (or search result).
For example:
If you search in Google for hiking shoes and you click on the ad for REI.com, you will be taken to a landing page dedicated specifically to hiking shoes… As illustrated below…
Notice this page is specific to hiking shoes. As we’ll see below, this is much more effective than simply directing users to the REI homepage and forcing them to navigate on their own.
* side note: Depending on the type of business, marketers/business owners might want to incorporate a ‘lead form’ on their dedicated landing pages. This is a good way to capture visitor information. Obviously, this is usually not necessary for ecommerce sites.
Back to the Study: The Results
In it’s 2011 Landing Page Optimization Benchmark Report, Marketing Sherpa reveals how important it is to have dedicated landing pages.
This pie chart is based on data from 2,673 marketers. According to the study, it’s clear as to why websites must incorporate dedicated landing pages in their online marketing efforts.
Furthermore, the graph below indicates the effectives of landing pages that are specifically driven by paid search or context ads.
As you can see 96% of the study participants claim the dedicated landing pages to by either very effective or somewhat effective. Not too shabby.
Of course, having landing pages is only half the battle. As with just about anything else involving online marketing, there are best practices to optimize your landing pages for maximum conversions.
For help with this, feel free to contact Clear Peach Marketing!