Every day, Internet users conduct over 3.5 billion searches on Google. And there are 644 million active websites. So the question for many companies is: how do I get noticed? How do I get there anyway found? Almost all companies consider on-page and off-page SEO, content marketing and web design. Other companies branch out and create paid ads to drive traffic to their website regardless of traditional SEO.
Paid ads and the new ad in town
There are many platforms you can create paid ads on – from Facebook to LinkedIn to Instagram – but we’re going to focus on Google. Paid advertising is just that – you pay Google to appear in the ad spaces at the top of the Google SERP. We’re not going to go into the details of pay-per-click (PPC) versus pay-per-impression (PPM) advertising, but the bottom line is that Google ads can get expensive. Do you work? Yes, if you know what you are doing. Check your metrics!
In January 2017, Google decided to stop supporting Flash Player ads. Then, in the summer of 2018, Google announced that it would introduce responsive search ads. Google is constantly trying to make improvements and innovations, so Is This New AI Generated Promotion Good For Your Business? And should you care? Should you consider the impact and impact on your business?
What do responsive ads do?
With responsive search ads, you can present more text and more relevant messages to your customers. That, of course, is the official Google line. It’s still new. Google Ads will now automatically test different combinations of your messages to find the message that works best over time. It all sounds good. Basically, Google is saying that more people will see your ad, which means that more people are likely to click your ad and potentially buy your product or service, or visit your blog – regardless of the metric you set up your ad for.
What are the benefits of responsive ads?
Google finds that responsive ads can help you present a more relevant message to the customer. You can provide a more flexible message (with three headings and two descriptions) and your ads will adapt to form the combinations that work best for you. In addition, you can control and restrict the parameters if you really want to. Responsive ads increase the performance of your ads by increasing clicks by 5-15% which is pretty good. In short, Google claims that responsive ads reach more potential customers and match your results with more relevant searches. Their slogan description is: “Show the customer the right message at the right time”.
Other advantages are a new, larger advertising format, which means that you take up more space in the Google SERP, which means that you may be more noticed. And all of this is generated through machine learning.
The idea is that creating your ad is now less time consuming and you can monitor the performance of each asset. You can now replace your underperforming assets and test new ones, which means you are optimizing for the best performing message.
Currently these ads are only available in English, Spanish, French and German. Other languages should be available shortly.
How does it work?
For more information on creating these ads, check out our blog post “New Responsive Google Search Ads Will Show 90% More And Be More Relevant” here for the Google Academy Recommendations video.
But basically you write the text assets by creating your headings (3-15 of up to 30 characters), then providing your descriptions (2-4 of up to 90 characters) and finally presenting a URL. At this stage, you can create parameters or just let Google do its magic. After all, ad groups with responsive search ads can typically see an average click increase of 15%!
Should I be concerned? Should I change my SEO strategy?
If you are concerned, ask your SEO agency what they think of this new feature and what they are doing to make sure your website is ahead of the times. However, if you’re not creating paid ads – or it’s part of your SEO package – it shouldn’t really affect your rankings. Most of the people who do Google searches know what results are coming from the SERPs these days and what are the paid ads these days. So if you ranked for a particular keyword before this change, you will likely still rank for that keyword afterward.
However, if you’re creating paid ads, this feature only seems to improve what Google offers. New responsive search ads seem to take the guesswork out of optimizing your content. You can see what is working and what is not in real time – and you have the option to tweak your messages until they are just right.
Once your ads are set up, the only thing left to worry about is whether your ads are bringing you as much ROI as your content marketing, for example, since 70% of consumers prefer to spend time learning about quality content and 68% of consumers want to know more about products Free time reading blogs from brands they’re interested in.
Bottom line: be aware of the change, but leave it to your SEO agency to take care of it.
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