Tag: ads

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The Brand Is What Matters

I liked this post out of Search Engine Journal, which linked to this post: Stop testing, Start shipping. It makes 4 points that I cannot emphasize enough:

  1. SEO is interconnected, not isolated
  2. There are no true control groups
  3. The test takes too long, and the world changes while you wait
  4. You can’t observe most of what matters
https://www.jonoalderson.com/conjecture/stop-testing-start-shipping/

Now I am a numbers and data person. I love using data, building metrics, and so on to figure out the right answer. But when it comes to SEO, I have a hard time believing a lot of the “studies” that come out. I put that in quotes because many of these studies aren’t worth the pixels used to paint the text.

There are so many variables when it comes to SEO, so many moving targets, that it’s almost impossible to allocate credit to what worked and what didn’t work. This is exactly the reason why I advocate working on the brand. Instead of burning time trying to squeeze another half a percent more out of SEO, instead work on burnishing your brand.

Which brings me to this Search Engine Land article commenting on local search, with this gem:

For instance, while past stats suggested 76% of people check out a brand’s online presence before visiting in person, that story is shifting… Which brands stick.

Meanwhile, the basics still matter. Great customer service, strong community ties, memorable in-person experiences—these remain the foundation of building a local audience. What’s new is that these moments now shape what AI sees, what content surfaces in feeds, and what earns trust at scale.

https://searchengineland.com/guide/local-marketing

Yes, absolutely. As we move into an increasingly AI driven world, the easiest thing to quantify is not the quality of blog writing, or if the blog writing is actually true. The easiest thing for AIs to do is to quantify which brands are the most trusted, and then to leverage those brands as the base to generate their text out of.

Which takes me to this Reddit post covering a Ahrefs study: Websites With More Organic Search Traffic Get Mentioned More In AI Search. There should be an obvious tag all over that headline because it makes intuitive sense: Websites with better/more-respected branding are considered more authoritative, and therefore they should get mentioned more.

So bottom line: as we move towards the AI-ification of marketing, the winner takes it all. Take good care of your brand. Keep it squeaky clean and you will see dividends.

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Pointing out some interesting 2024 Reddit posts…

In celebration of closing 2024 and opening up 2025, I wanted to point out some interesting posts on Reddit about Google Ads and SEO.

The $1 Ad Campaign

Admittedly a humorous/incredibly lucky story, but it illustrates that trying new things can occasionally help.

The Multi-Venue Marketer

This helps to underline that your customers are not only looking at your website, but they’re also looking up reviews of your products on other venues. Now I don’t agree with this post 100%: there are two things I would add. Number one is to post high quality images and videos of your product – if you’re missing those, of course customers are going to try to find them on other venues.

The second item is that not just Gen Z does this: I’m a millennial and I frequently do the same – look up videos and reviews on YouTube, Facebook, etc.

This post is a great example of why it’s important for you to curate your presence across all social media channels, and even why linking sales to a particular funnel is hard – if a Google ad had brought the customer to this product, would you credit the Google ad, or the TikTok/YouTube/Instagram/Facebook review of it for making the sale?

Local search can get weird

And here’s your daily reminder that local search gets weird, fast. If I had this client, what I would have suggested is to build a separate site for each dentist, naming each site some version of (dentist/teeth/tooth/some-other-synonym-or-related-word-to-teeth)(city-name) . com. And someone did make a similar comment to that in the comments of that post. Local SEO can be a surprisingly fun place to specialize in because the “normal” SEO tips are often inverted and Google Search seems to take into account more local-specific details rather than focusing on the technical hints that pages offer.

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Marketing: A Clever Example Of Counterprogramming – How To Own The Internet News Cycle

Yesterday, November 18 2020, was Mickey Mouse’s 92nd birthday. You may have seen it on your local news; I saw it mentioned on my local ABC station (ABC is owned by Disney).

Here’s a screenshot of a news-anchor from my local ABC affiliate commenting on Mickey’s birthday:

Extracted from https://www.facebook.com/HoseaSandersABC7/posts/3471367576246363

Unfortunately for Disney, Mickey’s 92nd birthday was not a major topic of conversation on Twitter and other social media locations. You may have seen another story about Disney bubble up yesterday, and this story is much less flattering to Disney: SFWA – #DisneyMustPay Alan Dean Foster. In short, Disney is accused of not paying royalties to Alan Dean Foster, who wrote a number of Star Wars and Aliens novels that Disney acquired the rights to when it purchased LucasFilm and Fox.

This story (and the hashtag #disneymustpay) was a trending item on Twitter for most of yesterday; this tweet summarizes the situation very well:

Extracted from https://twitter.com/jeffs_comics/status/1329214047569448962

I’m not here to litigate which side is correct, but I did want to point out the beauty of how this story was marketed: it was set up as counterprogramming against the story of Mickey Mouse’s 92nd birthday.

Yesterday’s news started with Mickey Mouse’s 92nd birthday on the news cycle: that “primed the pump” for more Disney related stories. By publishing the article #DisneyMustPay Alan Dean Foster on the same day, the article received much bigger growth and coverage than it would have if published on any other day. It inflicted reputational damage on Disney (which hurts more because Disney is a consumer-focused company) and cost Disney the chance to use Mickey’s 92nd birthday to drive more sales (because on November 18th consumers were thinking of Alan’s story, not Mickey Mouse). All in all, the SFWA managed to get Disney’s attention in a big way, and I’m sure Alan’s story is now being considered in the executive level of Disney’s management.

This case is a great example for any guerilla marketing campaigns: set up your marketing as counterprogramming to a bigger rival’s work; you’ll get far more reach out of your campaigns and your rival’s marketing will be much less successful.

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Why You Need To Buy Google Ads – GrubHub Edition

An incredibly thought-provoking article showed up today, written by a current restaurant owner – but one that has experience in technology circles. I strongly recommend reading it: https://www.saddlebackbbq.com/how-google-doordash-grubhub-conspire-screw-local-restaurants .

Obviously the top-line theme is how GrubHub and DoorDash take a large proportion of the monies from online orders. But there is a lesser theme that I want to emphasize which is easy to lose in the outrage. Quoted from the article:

DoorDash pays Google an advertising fee to steal customers that are searching for our restaurant name “Saddleback BBQ” and they are redirecting them to their own page. From there a customer can purchase from any BBQ restaurant in Lansing…

From https://www.saddlebackbbq.com/how-google-doordash-grubhub-conspire-screw-local-restaurants

Here’s the takeaway: While SEO is important, it’s not the end of the line. You could be the top result for your keywords, for your own business name (which was the case for this BBQ restaurant), and competitors will still take business away from you by running ads on your own name. This shows the power of a Google ad, especially an ad within Google’s Knowledge Panel (the side panel that provides contextual information).

That’s why it’s so critical to buy Google Ads on even searches you’re the top result in: to get rid of competitor ads that are trying to redirect business that should be yours. It might sound like a lot of extra money to spend, but as long as you provide a interesting landing page for the user the additional cost should not be too much.

One of the recurring themes I like to touch on with this site is how important ads revenue is to Google. As Google optimizes their search to show more local and “hyperlocal” content, more space will open up to show ads. Businesses will have a choice: buy up those ad slots, or their competitors will.

That’s why you need to be buying Google ads.

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Leveraging Google Maps To Comparison Shop Between Travel Sites

Need to book a hotel room, but you’re looking for a good deal? Google Maps has you covered. This post is if you already have a particular hotel picked out.

As an example, I’m going to pick the Contemporary Resort in Orlando, Florida. First, go to Google Maps and type in contemporary resort. Select the Contemporary located in Orlando, FL.

Using Google Maps to locate the Contemporary Resort, in Orlando Florida.

After searching, you’ll see a screen similar to the below:

Contemporary Resort hotel availability from Google Maps.

On the left hand side, there are advertisements (note the small Ad disclaimer in the middle of the screen) where Expedia and other trip planning sites offer deals for the hotel. You can comparison shop between providers – KAYAK is offering rooms for $492, but Expedia is offering for $488 (see purple arrow). The dates of the hotel stay can be changed as well, see the red arrow for the date pickers.

Keep your eye out for similar ads and deals in Google Maps – I frequently see travel deals being offered.