Recently, Facebook updated Ads Manager app with a suite of new creative tools, via mobile device advertisers can create an ad content. In 2015, Ads Manager app was introduced. This mobile solution was introduced for creating and monitoring Facebook ads.

Today, image-based content for Facebook ads had to be created outside of the Ads Manager app. Advertisers would have to save the image to their phone and upload it to Ads Manager. With this new update, Ads Manager is a step closer to being an all-in-one mobile solution for Facebook advertisers. Advertisers can edit the ad images and they can create the advertisement itself, directly from the Ads Manager app.

This new update to Ads Manager can now be downloaded on iOS and Android. Read more for further assistance with Facebook ads:

 

Facebook Ads Manager now offers the following creative tools:

Text Overlay & Text Policy Checker: Incorporate text within an ad, select different fonts, adjust the text’s positioning, and alter clarity. This text policy will be based on Facebook’s guidelines.

Image Cropper: Crop images to fit within ads and Page posts.

Templates: Ad templates are fully customized and comprised.

 

Shapes, Stickers & Logos: Add a logo, stickers, and shapes to customize the ad and showcase important information.

Color Filters: Adjust the look of an ad by adding color filters.

Are you ready to know how to make effective PPC ads?

Learn more about Pay-Per-Click Marketing Basics and its best practices in PPC keywords, ad targeting, and much more!

Creation of Solid Link-Building Strategy.We all know about keywords and backlinks are two separate parts of SEO. However, these work best when used together to make a well-optimized and high-ranking website.

Link building remains one of the most important factors of SEO.Which means getting links from diverse domains is extremely important for SEO. In other words, seeing several sites promoting others page keeps Google happy. The more domains that link to you, the more endorsements Google sees and your site climbs the ranks, which makes Google happy and you too.

The Best Strategies For Successful Link Building

There are many effective link-building strategies which can help improve your site’s visibility.

If you want to get clever about link-building, then you should build up a database of websites that have linked to you in the past.

You should do this because these sites are probably already interested in your content. Therefore, they are more likely to be fans of the new content you produce. You can use tools like Google CSE and Ahrefs Site Explorer to easily compile a unique list of potential linkups.

Believe it or not, you can also use the link building strategies of your competitors to your advantage. Most of them are likely to be investing in link building and may have built lots of solid links already. But don’t worry, this just means they’ve done the hard work for you.

All you need to do is research to replicate their link profiles. It’s perfectly ethical, so why not be a bit resourceful?

How to use Keyword Research to Guide Your Link Building Strategy

Link-building strategies are a must. But to get ahead of the crowd you need to use everything in your armoury. Using keyword research to back up your strategy can make your site stronger and boost your ranking.

Keywords and backlinks go hand in hand with the pillars of SEO.

We should always consider about keywords and link building work together before content is published. When content is strategic, you will successfully secure links and expand keyword ranking. Remember, you can’t rank for absolutely everything. One well-utilized keyword is as valuable as fifty that are out of your reach.

Let’s take a look at how to effectively carry out keyword research.

Analyze your Website for Keyword Opportunities

The best way to start is to perform an audit of your site. This will identify the best ranking opportunities for your site. This can be carried out by analyzing existing content and seeing how it could be improved or recycled into new content. In your audit, your goal should be to identify the underlying themes and keywords which will allow improvement. Once you figure this out, you can target these keywords by creating blog posts and pages that are focused on the theme and intent.

Analyze Competition Sites which are already Ranking for the Keywords.

Competitors are taking a vital step towards Ranking for the Keywords. By examining your competitor’s pages you can see what they are doing to rank the keywords that you are targeting.If Google is providing you with snippets or images for your relevant keyword, take this as an indication. Search results show you what searchers are looking for. This will tell you what content you should be creating. A crucial mistake that even SEO experts make is ignoring domain authority. Try to figure out what is driving successful ranking in your unique competitor pages. Take a close look at the pages that are ranking for the keywords you want to use.

For Creating Better Result Generating Content

Take your research to your next content brainstorming session and incorporate it into your plan. Do it the same as your competitors do, but in a better way. At this point, you need to start implementing your link building strategy. This can be done by analyzing competition’s linked pages.

If you follow these tips, you have a strategic plan for your content that serves user intent for specific search terms.If you do implement these two tactics in your link building strategy your page will start ranking well and it will bring more relevant traffic.

 

As consumers increasingly use search engines for researching and purchasing goods and services, this presents a massive opportunity for businesses that invest in SEO.

Google has grown steadily to become the most popular search engine in the world. As it grows and evolves, Google search is well and truly on its way to becoming humanity’s most treasured “personal assistant,” helping users find answers to their questions, discover solutions to their problems, carry out research and even get feedback, recommendations and suggestions from friends and trusted advisors. To do its job well, Google must rank content by the value it provides users. They use a number of different factors to determine search engine ranking but, the largest one is quality and quantity of inbound links.

Link Building Is Like A Growth Muscle

The first way will give you a quick boost and then lead to serious bodily harm. The second approach may take longer, but you’ll enjoy the health benefits alongside a better physique for many years. Link building is similar to building muscle. When you acquire legitimate links from high-value resources over a reasonable period of time, it may seem like hard work. But, the impact these links have on your search rankings can be dramatic and long-lasting. Shortcuts might help you gain lots of links in a short period of time and scale the SERPs quickly but you’ll find yourself just as suddenly dropping down, or even being kicked out of the index.

Link Building Is No Longer Easy

There’s another important factor at play. Unlike doping control tests in sport, Google periodically changes the rules or adds a new one. Tactics that were once considered legitimate and white hat are now considered as a spammy. As a business owner working to improve your website’s SEO, you must navigate safely between the various options and possibilities, making sure that you are being found by your customers wherever they are, whenever they need you, and from whichever device they are searching.

Tactical Balloting Isn’t Natural

Let’s decide to build links. By reverse-engineering top websites, you identify what you’ll need to rank higher and gain Google’s trust. But you also understand that Google wants your link building to be natural. As things stand today, there are many ways to trick Google into counting self-votes and reviews. That skews the algorithms and, to an extent, adversely impacts the quality of search results.

That’s the reason why Google is always working to refine its algorithm, determining ways to shut out the noise. For any business concern and website should constitute a well-ranked positioned in the Google search term. This change brings your SEO and link building more fruitful for your website.

Blogs are informal articles written for the purpose of showing thought leadership and expertise on a topic. They are a great way to generate fresh content on a website and provide a catalyst for email marketing, social media promotion to drive search traffic to your website.

There is some debate out there as to whether blogging is still relevant in today’s social media marketing environment. Regardless if you are a small business, or a multinational company, blogging is integral to your online content marketing strategy.

Here are few reasons you need to blog:

Use That Traffic to Convert Visitors to Leads

When you attract new visitors to your website this creates a new opportunity to generate leads. This is where your Call-To-Action (CTA) buttons come in handy. A CTA is a way of directing your website visitors through your website, to keep them engaged on your site, guide them through their journey from awareness to purchase. Good CTA’s include “Find out more”, “download”, discounts, free offers, options to subscribe to your mailing list, etc. You can also use the CTA button on a blog post to move the visitor along to another relevant blog topic on your website or even convert them to a relevant page on your website that explains your services.

Develop better customer relationships

Blogs provide another source to deepen the connection with your customer. By connecting directly on your website, your clients are able to get to know your business or product from the comfort of your online home base. Use this. Again, build trust by being a source of information. Consumers like to be informed, and appreciate that you are the one teaching them. Additionally, just as on your other social sites, respond to comments and interact with your consumer. If they have questions about a product you are writing about, respond to them directly on your website. Unlike many social sites, a blog is generally searchable on your site for some time. Your website comments last longer than on a Twitter response or Facebook post. Other customers will see your interactions too.

Blogs are Long-Term used to increase your SEO/SERP

Once a blog is indexed in search engines it stays there, meaning your blog can still gain traffic and generate leads weeks, months and even years after. Don’t look for instant leads and hundreds of views, give your blog time to generate interest. Blog topics that are timeless will constantly generate more views month after month, so make sure to write about topics you know will be of interest to your target audience.

Position your brand as an industry leader

Well written articles demonstrate your company as an industry leader. By posting topics which resonate with your market and show your knowledge, you are marketing your skills for your business, service or product too. If you are a retailer, for example, write blog posts about your products. Your customers will get to know you as the knowledge source for the products they want. If you are in B2B, post articulate, well researched articles about your service. Become the hub, or the place to be, for your industry. You are building trust, too. The more you can show that you are well-versed in your field, the more likely your consumer will trust you to supply what they need. Your customers additionally benefit from the learning you provide them.

Blogging allows you to share information about your business and its services but it also allows you to share opinions and thoughts on certain topics. Blogging is a great way to create a personality for your company and makes your business more credible approachable. So, don’t be afraid to share your interests on your blogs, comment on timely news topics or market trends or educate your readers on a particular topic. Always be sure you write blogs with your audience in mind.

Imarks work with clients on blog concepts and create content calendars for your website in order to keep your website active and to assist in driving traffic and generate valuable leads.

In this blog, we do research in-depth about the changing trends in digital marketing. Let's now drill down into the key tactics about the digital marketing technology.

1. Content marketing trends

Content marketing has been focus a lot on how to create an integrated content marketing strategy through advice in our content marketing toolkit. It illustrated in the Competing on Content infographic, shows that more businesses are now using a strategic approach (70%), so this is a trend we can expect to see continuing in 2018. We can also expect that there will be more focus on Measuring Content Marketing ROI as the cost and competition within content marketing increases.

2. Big Data

Big Data marketing applications include market and customer insight and predictive analytics. This trend selected by many, who have experienced the increase in volume, real-time data and data formats in their business and want to exploit the value to increase sales through personalization on websites and through email marketing through predictive analytics - a topic we have covered many times on our blog.  It's also closely tied into machine learning where Big Data is mined to identify propensity to convert given different customer characteristics and behavior.

3. Importance of Online PR

Online PR today is inextricably linked with Content marketing, SEO, and Social media as we all know, for helping businesses to achieve greater visibility and bottom line to impact from online marketing channels. Yet despite its importance, many businesses still don't understand why online PR is such a critical part of their overall marketing strategy. We’ve refined our online PR and marketing techniques to leverage emerging Internet technologies and for clients' advantage. It is a correct time to start using online PR to generate substantial returns for your company.

4. Mobile marketing

Mobile also has a large impact on search marketing as Google vigorously follows its mobile first mantra. To me, it's a somewhat misleading mantra, since the reality is that many web users are still using desktop, laptop and tablet devices and there is a danger with mobile responsive designs that conversion on higher resolution screens may fall if mobile optimized. Instead, leading companies are looking at adaptive mobile design approaches which have the benefit of serving more relevant, contextual content and CTAs for users and reducing load times.

5. Marketing Automation

Like content marketing, marketing automation has been in the top 3 position in the digital marketing. Many businesses still have a potential for improving their automation as our research on the State of Marketing Automation shows. To help with this knowledge gap, including CRM, behavioral email marketing, and web personalization gave more webinars and talks on Marketing Automation than on any other topic past years. Some questions are answered in Email marketing and marketing automation toolkit which includes a free interactive capability review to score your email marketing automation. As businesses progress by putting lead scoring in place, or refining it and learning the best places on the journey to feature content through predictive analytics.

There is simply no better time than to represent yourself by using these latest trends and technologies of digital marketing to generate a substantial return for your business. Call us today and let IMarks become a partner in your company's online success.

Which one is better for the business growth SEO or PPC?

The main difference between Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Pay Per Click (PPC) is that traffic coming from SEO (organic) is free while traffic generated from PPC is not free. This is also the reason why you may sometimes see the terms organic search engine listings and paid search engine listings. Both SEO and PPC are part of Search Engine Marketing (SEM) which is one of the tools you can use as part of your overall Internet Marketing campaign.

The major differences between the two by using the following boundaries - position in search results, cost, traffic potential, conversion and ease of use it.

Organic Traffic vs. Paid Search Advertising

SEO:

You can get first page positions if your web site is optimized for search engines. As it is mentioned clearly, that SEO traffic is free and PPC is paid and while this is absolutely true, you should understand that it needs a lot of effort and hard work to get free traffic from search engines. As the competition is high for almost every keyword you search and you really need to have a high-quality web site and a great SEO plan to get one of the top 5 positions. There are no shortcuts despite what digital marketing companies are trying to sell you.  If you are not familiar how search engines work or don’t know anything about SEO then the best way to get search engine traffic is to hire an SEO expert to do the work you. The cost of SEO is indirect as you cannot pay to get to the first page but you may have to pay for SEO services if you cannot do SEO yourself.

PPC:

You can get your ad on the first page by paying a higher cost per click (CPC) as cost depends on a number of other factors. If we take the cost per click of advertising with the most popular PPC system, Google Adwords, it depends on the popularity of the keyword, on the number of advertisers who want to use the particular keyword, the number of related web sites that have ad positions for the particular keyword and much more. If it sounds a bit complicated then it probably is, despite the efforts made by Google to make the whole system easier to use. The good news with PPC is that you only pay for the clicks your ad receives and not for the views. In addition, you can determine in advance your daily budget and pay no more than that and you can calculate an estimate of what is the average cost per click for the keywords you want to target. You pay only when people click on your ads.  You can use the Google keyword tool to calculate how much you can pay.

“SEO vs. PPC” which one is Ease of use

Neither SEO nor PPC is easy to do if you don’t have the necessary knowledge and experience. SEO is a process that takes a lot of time and effort. It may take months or even years to rank for specific terms or not rank at all. If you are new to SEO, take a look at our comprehensive SEO Blogs to get an idea of what SEO is all about. On the hand, in order to get some good results with PPC and Adwords, you have to hire a PPC expert to help you.

Which method can bring more traffic to your web site, “SEO or PPC”?

SEO (organic traffic) is more than PPC traffic so if you can manage to rank your web site for the keywords you want, you will get much more traffic than paying for those keywords. This is because when you are in one of the top 5 positions you can expect to have a continuous flow of traffic without having to pay anything as the actual volume of traffic depends on how popular a keyword is. So, if you compare traffic and cost of first page positions for SEO traffic and PPC traffic, organic traffic is better. If on the other hand, it is very difficult to get first page positions for a keyword then paying for traffic may be your only option since second and third-page positions will probably bring 0 or very little traffic.

“SEO vs. PPC” which one is better in Conversion

SEO: Organic traffic is continuous as long as you are ranking in one of the top positions. SEO traffic is better than other forms of traffic but in terms of conversion is not as good as PPC traffic.

PPC: PPC ads can get more clicks but this means that you pay more. Highly optimized keywords will generate more conversions but it will cost more.

If your ads are highly targeted and optimized than a visitor from PPC is more likely to convert than a visitor coming from search. The reason is that a web page can rank for different keywords so the search visitor may not be looking exactly for the content or product presented in the particular page. On the other hand, if you run a successful PPC campaign then you will only get clicks from visitors who are interested 100% in your content or products.

Apart from all these conversations what we discussed above are just mentioned for your knowledge but the bottom line is that you need to use both PPC and SEO as part of your Internet Marketing campaign. PPC can bring you faster results so you can run a PPC campaign and test which keywords convert better and then try with SEO to rank for those keywords. Use PPC when you have a high converting product and use SEO when you have a limited budget to spend on advertising. SEO may take time but the results are the long lasting while with PPC when you stop paying for clicks, traffic will also stop.

Columnist Pauline Jakober discusses what she believes will be big in paid search in 2016, with a look back at some of this past year's biggest developments.

Trends come and go in every industry, and it’s no different for paid search. This year, we saw brands adopting more methods and AdWords releasing a laundry list of features (including a place where you can view said laundry list at any time).

But I want to cover three specific areas in paid search that advertisers should definitely consider in 2016, and I’ll also share what we learned about them in 2015.

1. Your Ad Messaging Strategy

It used to be you could slap 95 characters on a PPC ad, give the client a few good options to choose from and call it a day. All that has changed.

And no, it didn’t just change this year. It gradually crept up on us as AdWords released more and more ways to jazz up our ads with its goodie bag of ad extensions.

Pretty soon, it became less about those 95 characters and more about designing a strategy — almost like you would with a website — carefully crafting the overall messaging using all the features available.

Consider this: There are seven manual ad extensions to choose from, including the latest with structured snippets.

That means new ways to combine and highlight key aspects of the business, including features, benefits and differentiators of a company.

Let’s look at a couple of examples so you can get an idea of just how much space you have to create a strategy…

• For this one, the free/no-fee aspect was important to the client, so we mentioned it twice, in the text and via sitelinks. We highlighted the types of legal representation through structured snippets. We also showed that they have 24/7 assistance and are board-certified in the callouts.

• On this one, FEMA compliant was the main message, so we mentioned it twice, once in the text and once as a sitelink. This company only sells certain sizes, so we outlined that via structured snippets. Other important attributes include the warranty and that the install is easy, and we used callouts for that.

It used to be that we had limited space to get the message across, so we wanted to be sure we didn’t have redundant text or include info that wasn’t the most important.

Today, we approach that differently by highlighting the key aspects of the business in different ways through all the ad features available.

2. Video Ads: A Must-Watch

Video campaigns are not new of course, but 2015 felt like the year they came of age. In other posts this year, I discussed important developments in video ads like:

• Why video ads in the search results are closer than ever.
• The massive opportunity for engaging, low-cost ads on YouTube.

In the past, we were focused on the Google Search Network only, then it evolved to be search ads plus remarketing and display ads. Now, when our clients have the budget, we layer video ads on top of it.

With Google integrating TrueView video campaigns into the AdWords interface, it won’t be long before advertisers catch on.

We think adopting this strategy now will allow you to be more prepared when video campaigns explode in the near future.

3. Remarketing Lists For Search Ads

If you feel that you’ve mastered the Search Network, go ahead and take it one step further with remarketing lists for search ads (RLSA). While this feature is nothing new (In fact, it launchedofficially in 2013), a lot of advertisers still aren’t reaping the benefits from it.

RLSA effectively lets you modify search ads, bids and keywords when past site visitors are searching on Google for products and services similar to yours.

This was the first year my agency religiously applied RLSA to all Search Network campaigns, and it allowed us to do some cool things.

First, we can review the returning visitor data right in the AdWords interface to see how they are behaving.

If returning visitors are converting at a higher cost per acquisition than new visitors, we can lower the bid on our search ads for this audience. If they are converting at a lower cost, we can increase the bid for that audience, too.

• WordStream has an in-depth article that goes into everything you need to know about RLSA here.
• For more inspiration on how other businesses are using it, check out a few examples here.

Beyond these three trends, there are, of course, many avenues to explore in paid search. I like to follow the paths that offer the most return for each individual scenario.

But figuring that out takes testing, so I urge you to pick at least one paid search tactic you haven’t tried yet to test in 2016. Without that first step, you’ll never know how good (or bad) it can be.

Article Reference : Search Engine Journal

Updates offer status annotations for flexible bid strategies, more performance reporting.

Google has added three new reporting features for flexible bid strategies in AdWords.

New status annotations provide more information about each bidding strategy. For example, clicking on the “Learning” status annotation for a new or recently updated bidding strategy will show the number of days left for learning and the days since the last big change. This lets you know that AdWords is still optimizing bids and tells you how long to wait before making other changes or analyzing baseline performance of the strategy.

Another example of a status annotation is “Limited (bid limits).” This annotation will show when there are minimum or maximum bid constraints in the strategy. Clicking on this annotation will show what percentage of impressions or spend is limited by the bidding constraints.

The full list of status annotations is available on this help page. You’ll need to enable “Bid strategy” and “Bid strategy type” columns to view bid strategy details.

In the Shared Library, two reports are now available to show bidding strategy performance over time at the bid strategy level.

Status over time reporting includes status annotations along the bottom of performance graphs to help shed light on what might be influencing bid strategy performance during a specific date range.

Target over time reporting will show the bidding strategy targets that were set during a time period on the performance chart so you can quickly see whether performance changes were likely tied to target changes.

Article Reference : Search Engine Journal

This isn't the first time Google has tested four top-line ads on desktop results.

Most advertisers won't be affected, but all should review to ensure compliance in the new year.