SEO News

With pretty much everyone agreeing that the new setup will likely push up cost-per-click (CPC), many charities operating in an already competitive market will see their ads pushed out of the picture. 

I caught up with Matt Lewis, a freelance ecommerce consultant working with adult education charity The City Literature Institute (City Lit), to find out how the loss of right-hand ads will impact charities and what he thinks Google could do to ease the damage. 

Q. How do Google Ad Grants work?

A. It’s a scheme that runs in parallel to the standard Adwords process. It allows charities and non-profits to apply to Google to get a free paid search budget (between $10,000 – $40,000 per month). 

There are a number of restrictions Ad Grants users face compared to their paid counterparts: search partners and display networks are unavailable, and bids are capped at a $2 maximum.

Q. How do you think the recent changes to Google’s right hand side ads will affect your PPC activity?

A. With bids capped at $2 within an already competitive auction, the pressure to appear in the top listings will become more intense. 

Over time we expect the required first page bids to increase (as indeed they already have) and the amount of visibility we can realistically get from the scheme will reduce. 

Q. To what extent will this impact the charity sector? 

A. The impact this change will have on charities is potentially quite a large one. Recent data shared on the impact of the change suggests that all results below the new position four are losers in terms of volume, organic search included. 

If charities are restricted because of bid caps and face lower volumes from organic search as a result of the changes, then potentially these organisations will be some of the hardest hit by the changes.

The new view

Q. What could Google do to try and limit the damage? 

A. My opinion would be for Google to remove the bid cap from the ad grants program or increase it substantially.

This would then allow the organisations who use it to approach their PPC activity with a lot more flexibility and get the full use of their budgets.

Q. What steps can charities take to avoid being impacted too harshly by these changes?

A. Being overly reliant on any one channel or source of traffic is always a risk, and diversification of an organisation’s media mix should always be something to consider when things like this arise. 

Developing business through communities and supporters offline is a tried and tested method for charities, and doing the same online should be an obvious port of call if it’s not something already being investigated.

Sign up if you haven’t already…

Despite its limitations, Lewis was quick to add that Google Ad Grants have given City Lit the means to get its cause in front of thousands of people it may not otherwise have been able to, so if you work for a charity it’s well worth signing up if you haven’t already.

Here’s hoping Google listens to what the charity sector is saying and takes steps to mitigate any potential damage caused by these recent changes.

With pretty much everyone agreeing that the new setup will likely push up cost-per-click (CPC), many charities operating in an already competitive market will see their ads pushed out of the picture. 

I caught up with Matt Lewis, Head of Ecommerce at adult education charity The City Literature Institute (City Lit), to find out how the loss of right-hand ads will impact charities and what he thinks Google could do to ease the damage. 

Q. How do Google Ad Grants work?

A. It’s a scheme that runs in parallel to the standard Adwords process. It allows charities and non-profits to apply to Google to get a free paid search budget (between $10,000 – $40,000 per month). 

There are a number of restrictions Ad Grants users face compared to their paid counterparts: search partners and display networks are unavailable, and bids are capped at a $2 maximum.

Q. How do you think the recent changes to Google’s right hand side ads will affect your PPC activity?

A. With bids capped at $2 within an already competitive auction, the pressure to appear in the top listings will become more intense. 

Over time we expect the required first page bids to increase (as indeed they already have) and the amount of visibility we can realistically get from the scheme will reduce. 

Q. To what extent will this impact the charity sector? 

A. The impact this change will have on charities is potentially quite a large one. Recent data shared on the impact of the change suggests that all results below the new position four are losers in terms of volume, organic search included. 

If charities are restricted because of bid caps and face lower volumes from organic search as a result of the changes, then potentially these organisations will be some of the hardest hit by the changes.

The new view

Q. What could Google do to try and limit the damage? 

A. My opinion would be for Google to remove the bid cap from the ad grants program or increase it substantially.

This would then allow the organisations who use it to approach their PPC activity with a lot more flexibility and get the full use of their budgets.

Q. What steps can charities take to avoid being impacted too harshly by these changes?

A. Being overly reliant on any one channel or source of traffic is always a risk, and diversification of an organisation’s media mix should always be something to consider when things like this arise. 

Developing business through communities and supporters offline is a tried and tested method for charities, and doing the same online should be an obvious port of call if it’s not something already being investigated.

Sign up if you haven’t already…

Despite its limitations, Lewis was quick to add that Google Ad Grants have given City Lit the means to get its cause in front of thousands of people it may not otherwise have been able to, so if you work for a charity it’s well worth signing up if you haven’t already.

Here’s hoping Google listens to what the charity sector is saying and takes steps to mitigate any potential damage caused by these recent changes.

Posted by dudleycarr

Until now, I was confident that developing a software service had never been compared to assembling furniture from Ikea (no Google searches were done to prove this assertion).

Believe it or not, we unlocked this achievement while working on the Google My Business API. The piece of “furniture” we constructed? We built the recliner that allows you to sit back and have your locations automatically imported from Google My Business to Moz Local. And like most things built with tools meant for hands far smaller than the average human hand, we’re proud of the end result and excited to announce this amazing (and comfortable) feature today in Moz Local!

Taking a step back, we looked at our fine construction and realized that there were a number of spare parts laying on the floor. We took those Google My Business API spare parts and built Moz Local’s new My Business Console. In furniture-speak, it’s like a nifty baby gate that actually allows adults to operate it without reading the instruction manual. In seriously-tell-me-what-this-thing-is terms, My Business Console gives you fine-grained bulk permission management for Google My Business.

Sync locations from Google My Business to Moz Local

Importing locations from Google My Business into Moz Local can now be done with a single click. This fancy feature replaces the CSV upload process that’s been a part of Moz Local since day one.

Although Moz Local has always accepted CSVs exported from Google My Business, the process was still quite manual and thus more cumbersome and error-prone than it needed to be.

Users can setup the import process via the Add Listings button in your Moz Local Dashboard starting today!

Moz Local’s new free tool, My Business Console!

My Business Console works with your Google My Business account and lets you, as a Google My Business owner, audit, add, and remove managers in bulk. For brands, agencies, and franchises that have hundreds of locations and dozens of GMB Business Accounts, permission management either gets in the way of collaboration or potentially exposes capabilities to people who shouldn’t have them.

Can’t wait? Check it out now!

Today, there are two ways within Google My Business to collaborate with others. You can add a person as a manager on the Business Account, giving them owner access to all locations in that account, or you can add the person as a manager on each location. The former provides a ton of power to whomever you add; the latter is mind-numbingly tedious to do.

With My Business Console, you can easily choose to audit/add/remove people in bulk, either at the Business Account level or at the Google My Business location level, allowing you to dial just the right level of sharing. Easy permission management, coupled with visibility across lots of locations and business accounts, should allow groups to better collaborate on location data.

Before we dive into how it works, a couple of really important things about My Business Console:

• First, it’s completely free now and forever for businesses small and large. Just like with our Check Listing functionality, we believe in providing important and accessible tools to help the Local community.
• Second, since this is a free tool, you do not need a Moz account. You simply log in with the Google account that you’d like to use to manage your locations.

So, how does it work?

First, you log in using your Google account from the My Business Console homepage.

There are two primary views: Locations and Managers. The “locations” view shows all of the locations that you have access to in Google My Business for your Google account.

Here you can quickly see which managers can modify a location:

To add or remove managers, you need to be the owner of a location. You can use the handy toggle to see exactly which locations those are:

Adding a user to two locations requires selecting the locations and then clicking the “Add” button:

The “managers” view shows all managers across all locations. This view is primarily to remove a person without having to find all of the locations containing that manager. Removing a person with a single click is necessary when that person leaves an organization.

Similar to location management, it’s easy to add and remove managers for your business accounts. Adding a manager to a business account will automatically give them access to all the locations under that account.

Try My Business Console out for yourself and let us know how we can make it even better:

No manual required!

Have more questions? Check out the FAQ.

Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don’t have time to hunt down but want to read!

Posted by Alex-T

[Estimated read time: 12 minutes]

Each search query in Google is a demand signal for us digital marketers. If you know exactly what users are looking for, you can easily spot what they’re likely to buy.

From a common sense point of view, it’s quite logical to say that if users search for something more, they are able (and likely) to buy more. As it turns out, this correlation doesn’t work within digital marketing niches. The commercial potential of a certain digital marketing service is not in direct proportion to the search volume it receives. In other words:

In the digital marketing industry, popularity doesn’t influence salability.

In the four digital marketing niches analyzed, I discovered:

1. SEO is still the most desirable service and it has the highest chance of leading to conversion.
2. Users want to know more about social media and content marketing, but they’re not ready to pay for it.
3. Users who are searching for PPC are the most likely to be converted.

After digging further into this article, you’ll discover which digital marketing services are the best to sell and why. Armed with this data, you’ll inform your strategy and have a leg up on your competitors.

Are the digital marketing services you’re selling the ones users are ready to buy?

Nowadays, we see how the digital marketing sphere is moving more and more towards content marketing and social media marketing (SMM). Everybody talks about these services — I’m no exception here. Moreover, there are plenty of digital marketers who are confident that without social media you can’t rank properly in Google (I’m not one of them).

However, it’s true that SMM and content marketing are now more important than ever. I was recently browsing through some BrightonSEO speeches and noticed that a substantial proportion of those talks were about content, SMM, copywriting, and even PR. I noticed the same situation with SMX events and many others. SEO seems like it’s becoming less important.

But what about market demand? “What are our potential clients really interested in purchasing?” I asked myself. I conducted a study to find out.

User search behavior in SEO, PPC, SMM, and content marketing niches

I analyzed 4 digital marketing niches: SEO, PPC, content marketing, and SMM.

Why did I choose these niches? They represent the top four services offered in the US digital marketing industry. Recently, I conducted a survey regarding the current state of digital marketing agencies’ services, costs, and payment models. Among the insights that I gained, I determined the most and least popular digital marketing services that agencies are selling today.

Top digital agency services offered in the US market.

However, this data was gathered solely from service providers, including agencies and freelancers. After considering these results further, I came to the conclusion that they don’t necessarily correlate with what clients want to buy. This all-important factor is completely missing from the data.

It was time to do some research on market demand via the most accessible information I could get: search queries.

Over 112,800 search queries were analyzed.

Because I’m experienced in keyword research, it was an easy task for me. I took the top four services offered in the US and created lists of keywords that are related to SEO, SMM, PPC, and content marketing. These keywords were mostly collected with the help of Serpstat and SEMrush. After I created a final list, I used Google Keyword Planner, which provided me with the most accurate cost-per-click and search volume metrics. In the following graphic, you can see sums of search volumes of queries concerning these niches:

To figure out how the popularity of a niche influences its commercial potential, I divided all queries related to these four niches into two groups – general queries and those that are agency-related. I put search queries in the “agency-related” category if they had any kind of commercial interest, e.g. if they included words like “fees,” “costs,” “prices,” “consultant,” “service,” “company,” “agency,” etc.

Agency-related queries spot the cases when users are ready to buy a service, while general queries are simply informational queries.

This distribution reflects the balance between what users are looking for versus what they are ready to buy, so here are my top hints:

1. SEO is still the most desirable service and it has the highest chance of leading to conversion.

SEO is a leading niche that attracts the highest search interest, as well as the most potentially commercial queries. If you’re already selling SEO services, don’t stop. And if you aren’t, perhaps you should start.

2. Users want to know more about social media and content marketing, but they’re not ready to pay for it.

The social media niche attracts a lot of searchers, but they’re less likely to pay for it. Although content marketing generates quite high search volumes, users aren’t likely to pay for it, either, as only four percent of queries are commercial.

3. Users who are searching for PPC are the most likely to be converted.

PPC, on the contrary, attracts less searchers; as we can judge from the sum of its search volumes, PPC is 10 times less popular than SEO. Nevertheless, it enjoys a higher frequency of agency-related keywords than the content marketing niche, and about 10 percent of its agency-related queries are likely to result in the purchase of PPC management services.

I also took a look at the most searchable and the most expensive keywords connected with these four niches and compared them. I assumed that they wouldn’t correlate. Market demand is represented by search volumes, which means that the most searchable keywords are the queries a lot of people use.

However, the most expensive keywords mirror the most competitive niches, which have a really limited audience of potential clients. In order to determine if I was correct, I compared the top five most searchable and most expensive keywords in each of the four niches.

The most expensive keywords show low search volumes.

By looking at the table below, you can see that my hypothesis was absolutely correct. The higher the suggested bid, the lower the number of searchers.

The average search volumes of the top five most expensive keywords for each investigated niche do not exceed 100 searches.

Average search volume and suggested bid for the top 5 most expensive keywords

The opposite trend was revealed for the most searchable keywords, where the average suggested bid is less than $20 USD, but the average search volume exceeds 5,000 searchers.

Average search volumes and suggested bids for the top 5 most searchable keywords

Based on this data, it’s obvious that you’ll pay less for keywords that have a larger search volume. Those keywords are informational search terms, rather than commercial ones.

8 facts about the most searchable and most expensive keywords

In the following diagrams you can see the top five most popular keywords and their search volumes in Google US, as well as the top five most expensive keywords and suggested bids.

SEO niche

Fact 1: A lot of people choose to deal with SEO issues themselves — at least, they try to with the help of special tools.

In the SEO niche, the most searchable keywords are general queries like “SEO” and “search engine optimization.” Also, a lot of users search for “SEO tools,” which is the fourth most searchable query. The search volumes of these keywords indicate that a lot of users would rather deal with SEO issues on their own, and that they’re looking for professional SEO tools. It’s no secret that new analytic tools are released every day to compete for rule of their respective marketing niches. On the other hand, quite a lot of users search Google for “SEO company,” which is the fifth most searchable query, and that indicates they’re eager to delegate SEO problems to paid professionals.

Fact 2: “SEO strategy template,” with a CPC of $120.28, is used by Google to promote AdWords.

As for the top five most expensive SEO keywords, I found they’re quite a curious set. The most expensive SEO-related keyword is “SEO strategy template,” which costs $120.28. This is a consulting query, so why has it become so expensive?

To find it out, I analyzed this query with the help of SEMrush’s Keywords Analytics tool. The results were eye-popping to me. The most mind-blowing thing here is Google’s actions. It turns out that Google itself is paying for this keyword to appear in paid search.

What’s even more interesting: Google is also paying for “SEO strategy template” to show the Adwords page in paid results. This would seem to prove that not all rules apply to everyone: we have to maintain the relevancy of landing pages and keywords for pages appearing in Google ads… but Google may not be subject to those restrictions. A campaign’s quality score is based on CTR, ad relevance, and landing page experience. It’s obvious that users searching for “SEO strategy template” have no interest in using Google AdWords!

Keyword ads history for “SEO strategy template”

PPC niche

Fact 1: Users don’t want to deal with PPC on their own.

It’s worth noting that the top five most expensive keywords are agency related. They are “PPC management agency,” “top PPC companies,” and “pay per click management service.”

Fact 2: The majority of the top five most expensive PPC keywords are agency-related search terms.

As we’ve already discovered, the PPC niche isn’t the most searchable digital marketing topic; remember, it receives 10 times less searchers than SEO. Nevertheless, it receives a rather large proportion of agency-related queries. Ironically, people are ready to spend their time running SEO on their own in order to make it “free.” But when it comes to ads campaigns, they prefer to find an agency or consultant.

Social media marketing niche

Fact 1: SMM education is getting popular.

In the social media marketing niche, all of the most searchable keywords are also general queries, like “social media” or “social media definition.” Also, almost all of the top five most expensive keywords for SMM are connected with education in the SMM sphere, namely obtaining a masters degree and online courses: “MBA in social media marketing,” “social media masters,” “masters in social media marketing,” and “online social media marketing course.”

Fact 2: Users have realized that managing social media also requires a strategy.

The query “What is social media strategy” appeared in the top five most expensive SMM-related keywords. I’m sure we can qualify this query as consultancy-related. There’s a high probability that users who are searching for an SMM strategy are willing to hire an expert to master their SMM channels.

Content marketing niche

Fact 1: Contently is the ultimate leader.

In the content marketing niche, there’s a brand search query in the top five most searchable keywords — “Contently” — which is a great example of how a company that provides content marketing software can achieve a wide presence in their niche. Also, one of the most searchable queries is “content management system.” I would say that such queries are likely to lead users to purchase professional content marketing services.

Fact 2: The most expensive keywords are related to content management tools.

The content marketing niche, unlike the other digital marketing niches I’ve analyzed, has a strong correlation between market demand and PPC rates. All of the most expensive keywords are also connected with content management systems: “content management system database,” “Drupal content management system,” “what does a content management system do,” and the niche query “healthcare content management.”

Obviously, many people are struggling to organize their content strategies and processes and are looking for a proper management system. The high prices for these keywords are in direct response to market demand.

Best SEO and PPC companies according to Google US

“That’s all interesting,” I thought, “but how does the situation look from the point of view of a potential client who’s unaware of what’s going on in the market?”

Let’s suppose that this potential client is a perfectionist and they want to buy services from the very best company. They would ask Google “what are the best SEO and PPC companies?”, so I did as well.

Hint: I bet you’ve never heard of a majority of them.

I analyzed Google’s SERPs for the queries “best SEO company” and “best PPC company” and chose agency domains that appeared in the first 10 results for each of these SERPs. You can see the results in the following graphics.

For the query “best SEO company,” agency domains that appeared in the first 10 results were Highervisibility.com, Boostability.com, Pagetraffic.com, and Outspokenmedia.com. I used SEMrush to analyze the organic search visibility these domains received from December 2013 to October 2015.

Because SEMrush only reports on traffic based on keywords, I decided to add Similarweb and watch organic search visits for these domains for the year 2015. Actually, I discovered absolutely non-positive trends — you can see this in the graphic below.

The following digital agencies appeared in the first 10 results in Google’s SERP for the query “best PPC company”: Jumfly.com, Wordstream.com, and Straightnorth.com. For these domains, I analyzed data concerning their paid search visibility with the help of SEMrush. In the following graphic, you can see the results:

For more detailed data for 2015, I created a Paid Search Visits report for these domains with the help of SimilarWeb.

As you can see, the majority of the best SEO and PPC companies according to Google are not the ones you might expect. Google’s ranking algorithms, despite constantly being improved and moving increasingly towards human-centered logic, are still far from perfect.

View the complete infographic here.

SEO, PPC, content marketing, and SMM thrashed out

Now that we’ve discovered the current market demand for the most popular digital agency services, you can use this data to better understand your potential clients and create more effective strategies.

Here’s a short recap to help kick off the conversation in the comments. The major findings are as follows:

1. High search volumes for certain topics don’t always mirror high-converting niches. You should always further investigate this correlation. (Note: You can easily apply this to any market’s landscape research, not just the digital marketing industry.)
2. SMM and content marketing are relatively new spheres, and they enjoy very high search volumes compared to PPC and SEO. But be aware that SMM and content marketing receive less commercial queries that are likely to be converted.
3. I have no idea why, but SMM education has become an extremely competitive niche. In fact, there are more experts who are ready to provide SMM courses than those who want to receive SMM education. If you want to sell SMM training courses, be prepared to enter into a highly competitive market!
4. As for content marketing, content management services are now competing against content management systems; so far, Contently is winning this battle.

Do you have any other thoughts, questions, or ideas? I’m super excited to hear them — sound off in the comments!

Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don’t have time to hunt down but want to read!