tutorials March 26, 2020

Google Ads Tutorials: Understanding how keywords work

About keywords in Search Network campaigns

Keywords are words or phrases that are used to match your ads with the terms people are searching for.

Selecting high quality, relevant keywords for your advertising campaign can help you reach the customers you want, when you want.

This article explains how keywords work, where your ads will show, and how much they cost.

How they work

To get your ads to appear when people search for your product or service, the keywords you choose need to match the words or phrases that people search for.

Example

If you sell frisbees, you can add "buy frisbee" as a keyword in your Google Ads campaign. When people type "buy frisbee" on Google search, your ad might appear on the search results page. In addition, if your Search campaign is also targeting the display network, then your ad could also appear on websites about ultimate frisbee.

When a customer searches for a term that matches your keyword, your ad enters an auction to determine if it will show. Learn more about the ad auction.

The cost for each keyword will be different depending on the quality of your keyword, your competition in the auction, and other factors. Make sure your keywords and landing page are all closely related to the terms that a customer might be searching for. To help you understand the quality for your keywords, each keyword has a Quality Score.

This score is based on expected clickthrough rate, ad relevance, and landing page experience. Higher quality ads and relevant keywords typically lead to lower costs and better ad positions. Learn how to make sure your ads are relevant.

How your keywords match to searches

You can use keyword match types to have more control over what searches your keywords match. For example, with exact match your keyword will only match searches that are identical to your exact keyword, or close variants of your exact keyword. With phrase match, your keyword will match close variants of your exact keyword and may include additional words before or after.

If you don’t specify a match type, your keyword will default to broad match and can match to variations of your keywords.

How to exclude searches

To prevent your ad from showing for particular searches, you can also add negative keywords.

Negative keywords can help you reduce costs by making sure your ad shows just to the audience you want. Learn more About negative keywords.

Example

If you sell dog clothes you can target searches for “pet clothes” and add "cat" as a negative keyword to make sure your ad doesn't appear to people looking for cat clothes.

Where your ads appear

You can choose to target your ads to a number of different ad networks. Keywords work a bit differently on each network:

Google search and search partner sites: When you build your ad groups, you select keywords relevant to the terms people use when they search, so your ads reach customers precisely when they're looking for what you offer.
Google Display Network: If you've chosen to show ads on Display Network sites, Google Ads uses your keywords to place your ads next to content that matches your ads. Google's technology scans the content and web address of a webpage and automatically displays ads with keywords that closely match the subject or web address of the page. For example, on a webpage that includes brownie recipes, Google Ads might show ads about chocolate brownies or delicious dessert recipes. Learn how to choose your keywords for Display Network campaigns.

Tips

Choose your keywords carefully. Include terms or phrases that your customers would use to describe your products or services. Make sure your keywords directly relate to the theme of your ad and the page you're directing your customers to. Keywords of two or three words tend to work most effectively.
Group similar keywords.Try grouping your keywords into themes. These themes can be based on your products, services, or other categories. For example, if you sell rings, you can have a group of keywords for "engagement rings" and another group of keywords for "wedding rings." Then you can create separate ad groups for these groups of keywords and have specific ads for "engagement rings" and specific ads for "wedding rings."

Google Ads Tutorials: Account organization

About your account organization

Before you create more ads, you should understand the three-layer design of Google Ads. Understanding the relationship between these layers of your account will help you organize your ads, keywords, and ad groups into effective campaigns that target the right audience.

This article explains how the elements in your account are organized.

How Google Ads is organized

This video is also available in Hindi on YouTube.

Google Ads is organized into three layers: account, campaigns, and ad groups.

Your account is associated with a unique email address, password, and billing information.
Your campaigns have their own budget and settings that determine where your ads appear.
Your ad groups contain a set of similar ads and keywords.
Notes
- For video campaigns, an ad group contains video ads with common targeting criteria and bids.
- An ad group can have video ads with only the same format. To run TrueView in-stream and in-display video ads, you need to create two different ad groups.

Account
Unique email and password Billing information

Campaign	Campaign
Budget Settings	Budget Settings

Ad Group	Ad Group	Ad Group	Ad Group
Ads Keywords	Ads Keywords	Ads Keywords	Ads Keywords

Google Ads Tutorials: How the Search ad auction works

How the Google Ads auction works

Google Ads determines which ads should show with a lightning-fast ad auction, which takes place every time someone searches on Google or visits a site that shows ads.

There are 3 main factors in the ad auction that determine which ads appear, and in what order:

Your bid - When you set your bid, you're telling Google Ads the maximum amount you're willing to pay for a click on your ad. How much you actually end up paying is often less, and you can change your bid at any time.
The quality of your ads - Google Ads also looks at how relevant and useful your ad and the website it links to are to the person who'll see it. Our assessment of the quality of your ad is summarized in your Quality Score, which you can monitor—and work to improve—in your Google Ads account.
The expected impact from your ad extensions and other ad formats - When you create your ad, you have the option to add additional information to your ad, such as a phone number, or more links to specific pages on your site. These are called ad extensions. Google Ads estimates how extensions and other ad formats you use will impact your ad's performance. So even if your competition has higher bids than yours, you can still win a higher position at a lower price by using highly relevant keywords, ads, and extensions.

Together, these 3 factors determine when and if your ad will appear to potential customers.

Learn more about how bidding on keywords can help you create a cost-effective campaign.

Here is the Tutorial

Tushar 0

tutorials March 26, 2020

Google Ads Tutorials: Search basics

Where your ads can appear

When you advertise with Google Ads, your ads can appear on different places across the web depending on how you target your ads, to whom you choose to show them, and the types of ads you create.

This article describes where your ads can show and who might see them.

On Google Search and other search sites

Your ad can appear on Google when people look for the product or service you offer. When you create your ad, you'll choose a set of keywords—the words or phrases that will trigger your ad to show. Then, when people search using the words or phrases you picked, your text ads can appear alongside or above search results.

Google search sites: Ads can appear above or below search results on Google Search. They can appear beside, above, or below search results on Google Play, Google Shopping, and Google Maps, including the Maps app.
Google search partners: Ads might appear with search results on websites of Google search partners. For text ads, search partners include hundreds of non-Google websites, as well as Google Video, and other Google sites.

On websites that your customers visit

You can also choose to show your ads to people as they browse the web. Your text, image, and video ads can appear on the Google Display Network.

The Display Network is a collection of websites—including specific Google websites like Google Finance, Gmail, Blogger, and Youtube—that show ads. This network also includes mobile sites and apps.

If you've ever seen an ad on your favorite news site or in your Gmail account, and wondered how it got there, now you know: websites like these are part of the Google Display Network.

Your ads can appear on websites based on the targeting methods you choose. On the Display Network, there are several ways to target your ads:

Choose keywords and topics related to what your offer
Choose specific websites or pages
Choose specific audiences based on their interests, demographics, or whether they've visited your website before.

Learn more about where ads might appear on the Display Network.

On different devices

You can show your ads to people as they search or visit websites on the go:

Your text ads can appear when people search on Google from their mobile devices and tablets.
Your text, image and video ads can appear on Google Display Network websites when people visit these sites from high-end mobile devices, such as iPhones, Android devices, or tablets.
Your ads can also appear on mobile apps, which are considered part of our Display Network.

In selected locations or languages

If you have text ads, you can choose to show them to customers in an entire country, a certain geographic location, and even to customers who use names of locations in their searches.

To better reach your potential customers, you can also target your campaigns to the languages they speak. And if your customers speak multiple languages, you can create separate campaigns to manage ads and keywords for each of those languages.

Google Ads Tutorials: Intro to measurement & attribution

There are numerous types of attribution models. You’ll want to choose a model that best fits your needs.

A brand new hotel with a big budget might value introducing people to their brand, while a trip planning software company cares about every ad interaction on the journey. It depends on what you want to get out of Google Ads. You’ll want to choose a model that best fits your needs.

Whenever you start the process of picking a new attribution model, remember to test how that model matches your overall approach to Google Ads. You want to see if it drives more value or more conversions and then decide if you’ve made the right choice.

If you have enough conversions to qualify, consider using data-driven attribution (DDA)

Choosing the right attribution model is a big decision, and it’s sometimes best to let the numbers do the talking. That’s where data-driven attribution can step in. A data-driven approach takes the guesswork out of choosing a model.

If you have enough information to use data-driven attribution, it can paint the clearest possible picture of success in your account. Data-driven attribution was already available in Analytics 360, Attribution 360, and Google Marketing Platform.

Note

Attribution works for all conversions from your website, including those imported from Google Analytics.

Data-driven attribution methodology

Sophisticated algorithms evaluate all the different paths in your account (both converting and non-converting) to determine which touchpoints are the most influential. Factors such as the number of ad interactions, the order of exposure and the creative assets used in each conversion path are all incorporated into results. Using a counterfactual approach, the algorithms contrast what actually happened with what could have happened to determine which ad clicks are most critical for a conversion.

There are multiple benefits of switching to data-driven attribution:

Values all steps on the conversion path
Works with automated bidding (as do the other attribution model options)
Works even on very short conversion paths
Quick and easy to implement

The choice of models is ultimately yours, and there are some cases where you may find a more optimal model for your account. But if you have enough data to qualify, plan on using DDA.

If you can’t use DDA, consider a rules-based attribution model

Data-driven attribution is powered by your account’s history, and if you don’t have enough traffic you might not be eligible to use it. That doesn’t mean that you need to continue using last-click attribution, though.

Tip

If you use a manager account, use cross-account conversion tracking to combine your reported conversions. More data leads to better insights.

Like DDA, linear, time decay and position-based models all break up one conversion across each touchpoint. Splitting up a single conversion across all steps on the conversion path can give a clearer sense of a keyword’s value. And all models let you take advantage of automated bidding as well.

Picking a model should connect with your goals for your Google Ads account. Certain strategies tend to be growth-oriented, while others are more focused on efficiency.

Model	Description	Growth strategy
Last-click (DEFAULT)	Gives all credit for the conversion to the last-clicked keyword	Most conservative
First click	Gives all credit for the conversion to the first-clicked keyword	Most growth-oriented
Linear	Distributes the credit for the conversion equally across all clicks on the path	Moderate
Time decay	Gives more credit to clicks that happened closer in time to the conversion	Conservative
Position-based	Gives 40% of credit to both the first- and last-clicked keyword, with the remaining 20% spread out across the other clicks on the path	Growth-oriented
Data-driven	Gives credit to clicked keywords based on how imperative they were in the conversion process	Based on account’s performance

The approach that you choose is going to determine the relationship between you, your Google Ads account, and your customer’s path to purchase. Attribution is about putting the performance of different keywords into the proper perspective. Performance that seemed typical under pre-existing last-click models could be very different when you evaluate those keywords with a new model.

Keywords earlier in the click path (often generic terms) usually behave differently than keywords later in the click path (like brand terms).

	Early influence keywords	Late influence keywords
Typical CPC	High	Low
Typical CTR	Low	High
Types of keywords	Generic ("things to do in Tuscany")	Brand ("Mom and Pop's Tuscan Tours")

A more aggressive model, like first click, will shift performance stats to reward keywords earlier in the click path, while a more conservative model, like last click, will reward keywords that occur later in the click path. As you update the model you use, it might also make sense to re-evaluate the performance goals you have for your account. Many advertisers see better performance with lower cost per action (CPA) for keywords earlier in the click path once they move to an aggressive model, such as first click. If this is the case for you, consider increasing bids to get more volume at your previous CPA.

Here’s something to consider, especially in the days and weeks after you move away from a last-click model: your costs will likely remain the same but your conversions may show a small, temporary drop. That's because the conversion lag for non-last-click models tends to be higher than for last-click models. This could make it seem, for a brief period of time, that performance is getting worse. Things should quickly stabilize as your account adjusts to new ways of counting conversions, but know that slight performance drops are expected after changing models.

Tip

When reviewing performance data, remember to choose an appropriate history window. If you update your history window, you may see additional conversions that originated from clicks that fall outside of your current date range. While your cost data will remain the consistent (as it’s aligned with the date range you select), you may see more conversions appearing as you extend your history window.

Here is the video Tutorial

Tushar 0

tutorials March 26, 2020

Google Ads Help: How to create a video campaign

Here is the Video Tutorial:

Tushar 0

google ad manager March 13, 2020

What is Google Ad Manager

WHAT IS GOOGLE AD MANAGER – FEATURES FOR PUBLISHERS & MORE (GAM)

In June 2018, Google announced new branding for a range of their advertising products. With this initiative, they merged their DoubleClick For Publishers or (DFP) ad server with their Google Ad Exchange advertising source into a unified platform called Google Ad Manager or (GAM).

WHAT IS GOOGLE DOUBLECLICK FOR PUBLISHERS AND AD EXCHANGE?

Since GAM is a merger of older Google products, it’s useful to take a quick look at those products, especially DFP. So, what is DoubleClick For Publishers? It’s an all in one publisher ad inventory management solution and Google’s trademark ad server. This ad server is one of the most widely used products in the ad tech space and comes with a range of features such as yield management, data management, optimization tools, security, trafficking capabilities and more. It’s also MonetizeMore’s preferred ad server and is used by most of our publisher partners.

We’ve written extensively on the ins and outs of Google’s DFP ad server so you can get the most value out of your ad inventory. If you’re looking for help and support in managing your DFP ad server you can follow our link here.

Google Ad Exchange is often referred to as the premium version of AdSense. With Ad Exchange, publishers get access to premium advertising brands, a programmatic exchange, and advanced optimization tools. Find out more about our approach to optimizing Google Ad Exchange here.

WHAT IS GOOGLE AD MANAGER?

Google Ad Manager is a platform that brings the best of DoubleClick Ad Exchange and DoubleClick For Publishers into a unified account. In an age where publishers have evolved into multi-platform content creators, Google believes that their new branding better reflects the platform’s expanded capabilities.

An ad server with multiple features

With Google Ad Manager you can run all types of campaigns, whether it’s guaranteed or not on a programmatic basis with their waterfall of EBDA auction frameworks. The platform also provides an optimized competition feature that lets you maximize ad inventory yield across open auctions, reserved and private marketplace deals. It’s a complete platform that allows publishers to earn more ad revenue no matter how they sell their ad inventory.

Let’s you optimize revenue for all buyers

When Google launched Ad Exchange, the goal was to help publishers earn more revenue with real-time competition. The focus has now shifted from an auction or exchange to a complete sales channel. Ad Manager helps publishers curate their ad inventory with reserved and programmatic demand to optimize all relationships. Ad Exchange buyers have also been changed to authorized buyers.

Helping publishers monetize new arenas

With content creation evolving and people consuming content everywhere they go, it creates new ad opportunities for a variety of screen sizes and properties. With all of these monetization opportunities comes a new set of challenges such as establishing yield groups for apps, tags, determining the best ad units for mobile and desktop, etc.

With Google Ad Manager, you can use a single platform to handle it all including delivering, measuring, optimizing ads across all devices and platforms such as CTV, AMP, mobile apps, YouTube and more.

Helps protect your inventory

With all the advertising industry fraud challenges, protecting your inventory and protecting your advertiser’s brands are very important. Fraud can lead to lots of problems for a publisher such as a degrading user experience by showing inappropriate ads, annoying creatives and can even include malware. The platform has over 30 tools to manage which ads you allow to display on your publisher’s properties.

THE TRANSITION FROM DFP TO GAM AD OPTIMIZATION IMPACT

If you’ve been using DFP and found shifting to Google Ad Manager difficult, we’ve got the solution. We’ve created a tutorial showing you how to use the new product suite by transitioning from DFP to GAM. See that guide here.

CONCLUSION

Using Google Ad Manager requires a lot of skill, know-how, and experience – all of which can take a lot of time and money to learn. As a publisher, stick to what you’re best at such as creating content, growing your traffic and let the ad optimization experts help.

FAQ

What is Google Ad Manager?

Google Ad Manager is an ad server and platform that combines the best of DoubleClick Ad Exchange and DoubleClick For Publishers into a unified account. It provides a range of features such as ad serving capabilities, helps publishers optimize their ad revenue, and monetize their traffic.

How do I use Google Ad Manager?

To use Google Ad Manager, you need to sign up for an account and start trafficking your ad inventory through the platform. This way, you can set up ads, prioritize, and optimize them accordingly.

Is Google Ad Manager an ad server?

Yes, it is an ad server but provides a wide range of features.

How much does Google Ad Manager cost?

Users are allowed to use Google Ad Manager for free up until a specific impression threshold. For example, 90 million impressions per month for non-video ad units if you are located in the US, Canada, Australia, or New Zealand. Once a user starts going over the impression threshold, they are charged for non-Ad Exchange and non-AdSense impressions. For more information on other countries and thresholds, visit their terms of service page here: https://www.google.com/doubleclick/publishers/small-business/terms.

Tushar

seo March 12, 2020

A Simple 7‑Step SEO Tutorial for Beginners

Want to wrap your head around SEO, but getting scared off by technical terms and complex concepts? This friendly article walks you through everything you need to know to start ranking in Google.

Here’s a fun perk of working in the SEO industry—people always ask me some variation of this question.

So…I’ve heard that this SEO thing is good for my business. Why?”

I’ve since perfected my pitch:

When you’re good at SEO, your website gets on the first page of Google.

This usually gets an “Oh, that’s so cool. I want that!”

It’s as simple as that, and it is cool!

When I first started learning SEO, I was very nearly frightened off by terms like crawlers, backlinks, anchor text, nofollow vs. “dofollow,” white-hat vs. black-hat… the list goes on.

The industry seems to be plagued with technical jargon and complicated concepts, to the point where people struggle to understand what needs to be done.

Sounds like you? If so, you’re in the right place.

I’ll be preparing you for your first steps in SEO, all with explanations and language that are easy to understand.

Let’s get ranking! But first, a quick primer…

What are search engines, actually?

What’s the big deal with Google? What makes it different from Yahoo and Bing? Also, what manner of creatures are Naver, Baidu and Yandex?

They’re all search engines.

Essentially, what search engines do is collect information and content from all over the web and store it in a database.

According to a November 2018 report by netmarketshare, 73% of all searches are powered by Google. In second place is Bing with 7.91%.

An almost shockingly huge difference, yes.

So… what exactly makes one search engine so different from another?

The answer:

Size of their database;
How they determine which pages are relevant;
Specialization in market/type of content.

Google dominates the market because of the sheer size of its index, as well as the way it calculates page relevancy: i.e., its algorithm (more on that in a bit.)

In short, it’s proven itself to be by far and away the best at answering peoples’ queries with appropriate content. It’s now pretty much the way everyone in the world–except China–finds stuff online.

Of course, more specialized search engines also exist. Naver, Baidu and Yandex are examples of search engines that target specific markets–Korea, China and Russia respectively.

Fun fact: YouTube is also a search engine!

How does Google work?

So we know who the biggest player in the game is; now we need to know how it works.

Here’s a simplified version of the entire process of search, split into three parts: crawling, indexing and returning queries.

Or, in plain English: finding pages, storing them and then showing them to searchers.

Crawling

Imagine that you need to explore an unknown country. You start in a small town and drive down a road that connects you to the next town. You take the next road to the next town, and the next road after that. If you drive down every possible road from your starting point, you’ll eventually end up discovering every town.

This is how Google works–except the towns are web pages, and the roads connecting them are backlinks.

So: Google first starts with one webpage. It finds the links on these webpages and follows them to discover other webpages. It then finds all the links on those pages, and the next pages, and the next. Eventually, they’re able to discover pretty much everything on the web.

And how does Google do this?

It uses a computer program that’s commonly referred to as a crawler to “crawl,” or discover, pages and links.

SIDENOTE.

Crawlers are sometimes also called “spiders”–because they, too, crawl the web.

In SEO, we want to do everything we can to make the spider’s job easier. This, in turn, makes it easier for our webpages to get crawled.

Indexing

After finding pages on the web, the spiders then extract data from them and store, or “index,” said data in Google’s database—to then be shown in search results.

Here’s the fun part: spiders don’t actually view webpages the way humans do.

This is how you and I see the Ahrefs blog:

And here’s how Googlebot (Google’s web crawler/spider) sees the Ahrefs blog:

That’s the kind of data spiders collect and store: the date a page was created, its title and meta description, main keywords, links to and from it and other details specific to that search engine’s algorithm.

Try it out for yourself—think of your favorite website, then enter it into this page to see how it looks to a spider. Pretty different, huh?

In SEO, we want to ensure that the data that Google indexes after crawling our pages is as accurate as possible. This makes it much more likely that they show up in search results where we want them to.

Returning queries

When you enter a search query into Google, it searches in its database for the webpages that are most relevant to your query and displays them as search results. This relevancy is determined by its algorithm.

Unfortunately, nobody knows exactly what Google’s algorithm prioritizes…except for one universally agreed-on factor:

The number of quality backlinks to the target page.

Google places strong emphasis on backlinks as a form of authority and relevance.

Even as a beginner, there are thankfully plenty of ways you can get yourself ahead of the game when it comes to backlinks. We’ll cover this a little later on.

How do I optimize my website for Google?

Now we know that webpages need to be crawled and indexed.

Which brings us to the big question: what do we do to help this process along? And when it comes down to it…just what are we optimizing in “search engine optimization”?

The answer can generally be split into two categories, namely on-page and off-page efforts.

On-page SEO is all about adjusting elements on a webpage so that Google understands what it’s about, recognizes how awesome it is and decides that it deserves to be #1 in search results.

(This doesn’t happen all the time, but one can dream.)

On the other hand, off-page SEO is a fancy way to say “build lots of great backlinks so that Google thinks of your page as trustworthy.”

Generally speaking, the more and better quality backlinks you have, the more your pages are prioritized in search results. We have Google’s algorithm to thank for this.

Don’t worry; you don’t have to wrap your head around everything right now.

Here’s a 7‑step tutorial you can follow along with easily which incorporates both elements mentioned above.

1. Understand what keywords people are searching for

People search for your brand or business in tons of different ways.

For example, let’s say that you’re a hairdresser in San Francisco. People could search for “hairdresser in San Francisco,” “San Francisco hairdresser” or possibly even “hairdresser near me.”

Although they’re all phrased differently, they’re essentially asking the same thing.

So it’s really important to start by finding the most popular ways that people are searching for you. This way, you can cater to and optimize your content for those phrases (i.e., keywords.)

You have two options: guesswork, or keyword research tools.

Google Trends is one good (and free-of-charge) option that shows you the relative popularity of any search queries you enter.

One caveat: while it’s great for tracking trends, what Google Trends doesn’t do is show the search volume of said search queries.

So while we can see that “San Francisco hair salon” is clearly the winner here, it could, in reality, get four searches a month while the other terms get one. In which case, none of them would be considered to be popular at all.

That’s where Ahrefs comes in.

Take your best guess at a search term and enter it in Keywords Explorer. Let’s try “San Francisco hair salon” in this case.

From here, look at the “parent topic” feature that takes the #1 ranking page for your keyword and shows the best keyword that this page ranks for.

There we have it: hair salon San Francisco!

Now that we know what people are searching for, we can either create content on our website around “hair salon San Francisco” or modify existing content to fit these keywords.

Important: Keywords should always be chosen on a page-by-page basis.

For example, if you sell multiple products or services, you’ll want to target different keywords for each page. Google ranks webpages, not websites!

Also remember that in general, it’s not a good idea to blindly target broad, sweeping queries like “hairdresser.” Not only is competition nearly impossible to beat, but it’s also difficult to figure out search intent.

Which brings us to…

2. Create content that searchers want to see

Want to rank for a topic or keyword? Then we need to optimize our content for “search intent.”

Here’s the coolest thing: we don’t actually have to guess search intent. Since Google’s algorithm already works to serve the most relevant content for each search query, we can use this to our advantage. Just look at the existing top results to figure out what people are looking for.

Think about our topic of hairdressing.

I can’t figure out what people want to know just by looking at this term on my own. Do they want to know more about hairdressing techniques? Do they want to find a good hair salon?

We can check this in Google by typing in the term (note that the results are automatically localized to your country), or in Ahrefs’ Keywords Explorer—simply scroll down to “SERP overview” to see the top results for your keyword.

Let’s dive into some examples.

Here are the results for “short hairstyles”:

Looks like all the results are blog posts. The search intent here is clear: you need to write a blog post if you want to rank for “short hairstyles.”

Now, here are the results for “Korean hair salon”:

Putting Yelp’s dominance aside, individual salons are also ranking here. Seems like that’s what people want.

Finally, here are the results for “hairdresser”:

Some of the results are hair salon websites; some are blog posts. One is even from Wikipedia. And the others are definitions. Search intent is all over the place, so we have no idea what searchers want here.

Remember when we talked about how you shouldn’t target broad, sweeping queries like “hairdresser”? This is further proof—in general, the less focused a query is, the less clear search intent is likely to be.

Bottom line: Spend some time analyzing search intent, and make sure you give people what they want to see.

3. Get clicks with a compelling title

We’ve talked about how to rank a webpage for popular keywords. But you don’t just want to rank, do you? Searchers should actually click into your webpage.

So: make your titles (and descriptions) as click-worthy as possible. Make your content scream “CLICK ME” in the search results!

Let’s look at the actual Google results for “braid hair tutorial.”

Personally, that first result would definitely get a click from me. Not 1, but 23, tutorials which are creative AND easy-to-do? Count me in.

Unfortunately, there’s no exact science to writing compelling title tags and descriptions. It’s really about understanding your target audience and knowing what matters to them—then crafting a title which gets them to click.

With that said, here’s a good set of rules that will get you off on the right foot:

Stay true to search intent. Don’t forget the previous step and stray too far!
Avoid truncation. Google cuts your title off with the dreaded ellipses (…) if it gets too long, which hurts your click-through rates. Use this tool to check that it falls within limits.
Make it descriptive (but not clickbait). See the example above: phrases like “deceptively easy” make the title more enticing than just “simple.”
Include your unique selling point. Sell your brand, whether it’s “free delivery”, “est. 1975”, “only uses fresh milk from Hokkaido”…you get the gist.
Include your keywords if possible. Prioritize keeping your title natural-sounding and avoid keyword stuffing. Be honest; how do you feel about this description? “We’re a hair salon in California with the best hairdressers in California. Looking for a California natural hair salon? We are one of the leading organic hair salons in California.” It sounds unnatural, right?

Recommended reading: How to Craft the Perfect SEO Title Tag (Our 4-Step Process)

4. Keep URLs short and descriptive

Your URL could be https://www.coffeegrinders.com/2018/01/15/287539884.php

Or it could be https://www.coffeegrinders.com/bialetti-macinacaffe-review/

Which one includes the keywords you’re looking to target with this article? Which one are you more likely to click on in the search results?

Keep your URLs as short and sweet as possible. The collective sanity of internet searchers thanks you.

5. Optimize your images

It can be a little tedious, but make sure to name all your images appropriately.

Google themselves state that “the filename can give Google clues about the subject matter of the image. For example, my-new-black-kitten.jpg is better than IMG00023.JPG.”

In the same vein, optimize all your images by including alt tags with descriptions.

This is the text that shows up whenever your image fails to load or if the user is using a screen reader.

Here’s what it’d look like:

<img src=”/my-new-black-kitten.jpg” alt=”A picture of my adorable black kitten, Mittens.”/>

Remember how we discovered that spiders don’t “see” images on pages the way we do as humans?

Naming them helps Google to understand the images better.

Here’s what ranking in Google image search looks like for “bad links”:

This traffic actually adds up over time, too!

Here, I plugged the Ahrefs blog into our Site Explorer and used the SERP features filter to check how many keywords our images rank for.

Ahrefs Site Explorer > Organic Keywords > Apply “SERP features” filter: Tick “Image pack” and “Only linking to target”

That’s a total of 1,529 keywords.

While they’re unlikely to be a huge source of organic traffic, it’s definitely traffic that’s welcome.

Also, do your best to keep your image sizes as low as possible. You can use free tools like Imageoptim and Shortpixel to do this.

Recommended reading: Image SEO: 12 Actionable Tips (for More Organic Traffic)

6. Make sure your content is easy to read

It’s widely believed in the SEO industry that user signals influence rankings.

Do your best to optimize things like your title and image tags—but keep in mind that user experience is also important. If your content is difficult to read and digest, readers are going to leave (and for good reason).

Start using <h1>, <h2> and <h3> tags in your webpages. Think of these as a hierarchy for your content, with <h1> being the most important (and only used once per post), and <h2> being a subheading. <h3> is a subheading of <h2> and so on.

Here’s an example of a heading structure:

H1: Ponytails are great
- H2: Why are ponytails so great?
  - H3: They are easy to do
  - H3: There are lots of ways to style them
- H2: How to tie a ponytail
  - H3: High ponytail
  - H3: Low ponytail

Place your keyword within these header tags strategically, but make sure they sound natural—avoid keyword stuffing.

Additional tips to keep your content readable:

Use formatting like paragraphs, bolding and lists to break up big chunks of copy.
Don’t use big words—write how you would speak to a friend. So instead of using “feasibility,” use “chance.” Writing is about communication, not about making yourself look smart.
Tools like Hemingway help to analyze your copy and check if it can be easily understood.
Include images (with alt tags, wink) to better illustrate your points and break up walls of text.

Note: Many of the above tips were heavily condensed from our original guide to on-page SEO. Head on over for more in-depth strategies.

7. Get high-quality, relevant backlinks

Backlinks are very, very important.

Let’s start by breaking it down a little. Firstly, what’s a backlink?

It’s an incoming hyperlink from another website, or referring domain, to your target webpage. In plain English, when another website links to you, it’s giving you a backlink.

For example, this is a backlink to the Ahrefs Medium account.

In general, any SEO will tell you that the more and better quality backlinks you have, the higher your chances are of ranking a page and the more search traffic you’ll get.

Findings from our study of almost a billion webpages support this as well: we found a linear correlation between the number of referring domains and search traffic.

referring domains vs organic search traffic ahrefs content explorer 1

SIDENOTE.

Correlation does not prove causation, which means that this is not direct evidence that links help you rank in Google.

So, how do you build a backlink?

There are tons of tactics and strategies: guest posting, broken link building, or even researching your competitors’ backlinks and trying to replicate them are some.

Backlinks to backlinko.com – one of our competitors in the SERPs – via Ahrefs’ Site Explorer

Sounds interesting? We have an entire guide on looting your competitors’ backlinks.

But to get you started, here’s a super simple way to gain yourself a backlink right now—maybe even within the next couple of hours:

Get links from people you already have a good relationship with.

Think about everyone you already have a connection to through your business: partners, stockists, suppliers, clients, agencies.

Plenty of brands link out to others on their websites. You just need to reach out and ask.

Backlinks you can get if you’re a stockist

Backlinks you can get from partners

Make a list of all relevant companies that might give you a backlink and start reaching out! As always, be gracious: ask nicely and don’t be a jerk if they refuse.

There we go—that was a really simple link building strategy you can try right now. Not so scary, right?

When it comes down to it, getting backlinks is as easy as finding webpages where your link will add value, then getting a person who can edit the page to add it.

With that said, we’re obviously barely scratching the surface of the art of backlink building.

Some great places to learn more: head over to our in-depth easy link building tutorial, or dive into our YouTube tutorial on how to get backlinks super fast.

How should I get started?

SEO is a marathon, not a sprint–you’re playing the long game.

It’s not about a one-time optimization of five existing pages and never looking at your website again. It’s not even only about planning and creating evergreen content that will get you steady amounts of passive traffic.

These days, SEO seems to be everything at once, from optimizing pages for search engine readability to creating content that’s a perfect match to searchers’ needs.

Industry experts even seem to be in agreement that the definition of SEO itself is evolving. Once upon a time, the most in-depth SEO strategy involved stuffing a post chock full of the same keyword so that Google would associate said keyword with the page.

Clearly, those times are past.

In general, you want to:

Keep content up-to-date and relevant;
Produce quality content that targets high-converting keywords in your industry;
Actively work towards building backlinks;
Monitor your keyword rankings and backlinks—if there are sudden drops, you can investigate the issue (Do this easily with Ahrefs’ Rank Tracker. Here’s a guide on how to set it up);
Perform content audits every so often to optimize your existing content.

It can be very overwhelming to try and get everything right at one go, so my advice is: don’t bother.

Pick the area which suits your resources and aligns with your own skills the most.

If your existing team doesn’t have content creation abilities but love to network and do outreach, look at backlinks instead. Start off by trying to build one backlink through any strategy at all. Then build five more. Then aim for twenty.

By the time you decide to invest in content creation, you’ll have a website with a much stronger backlink profile to send those awesome authority signals to Google.

You get the gist!

Start off small and expand from there. You’ll learn the skills needed and figure it out as you go.

Over to you

We’ve just about covered the basics, I think!

That was quite a bit of information to get through; I’m glad that you made it all the way to the end.

Where to go from here? I highly recommend checking out the other articles on our blog for a ton more in-depth strategies and case studies.

If you’re so done with reading right now and would prefer to switch to video, we also have lots of step-by-step tutorials and guides over at our YouTube channel.

Hopefully, this post gave you enough background information as well as actionable tips to get started on your SEO journey. I’d love to know if it did, and how you progress from here on out.

Tushar

Digi Ads

Breaking

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If you have enough conversions to qualify, consider using data-driven attribution (DDA)

Note

Data-driven attribution methodology

If you can’t use DDA, consider a rules-based attribution model

Tip

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WHAT IS GOOGLE AD MANAGER – FEATURES FOR PUBLISHERS & MORE (GAM)

WHAT IS GOOGLE DOUBLECLICK FOR PUBLISHERS AND AD EXCHANGE?

WHAT IS GOOGLE AD MANAGER?

An ad server with multiple features

Let’s you optimize revenue for all buyers

Helping publishers monetize new arenas

Helps protect your inventory

THE TRANSITION FROM DFP TO GAM AD OPTIMIZATION IMPACT

CONCLUSION

FAQ

What is Google Ad Manager?

How do I use Google Ad Manager?

Is Google Ad Manager an ad server?

How much does Google Ad Manager cost?

What are search engines, actually?

How does Google work?

Crawling

Indexing

Returning queries

How do I optimize my website for Google?

1. Understand what keywords people are searching for

2. Create content that searchers want to see

3. Get clicks with a compelling title

4. Keep URLs short and descriptive

5. Optimize your images

6. Make sure your content is easy to read

7. Get high-quality, relevant backlinks

How should I get started?

Over to you

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