Good morning search marketers, you don't have to be flashy to be eye-catching,
There were several flashy announcements at Google Marketing Live — gallery ads, discover ads, etc. Yet there was a feature that might sound ho-hum on its face that got a big reaction in the room when it was announced. It was the one thing just about every paid search marketer I spoke to was excited about. Now it's live. Campaign-level conversions are available in Google Ads search and display campaigns. Video campaign support will come later.
This is a big, welcomed change from being forced to use the same conversion actions for optimization dictated at the account level. No more creating separate accounts or settling on a default for all of your campaigns. You can also set up conversion action sets (located under Tools > Conversions) to group conversion actions together and apply across campaigns.
Olga Andrienko from SEMrush shared brand new research on voice search at SMX Advanced this week. In an analysis of more than 50,000 queries across three Google Home devices and Google Assistant on an Android phone, the research showed 80% of voice assistant-delivered results came from the top three organic listings on a results page. Some 60% came from featured snippets.
Those stats may not be too surprising, but Olga shared several other noteworthy findings. For example, SEMrush said answer length matters for voice answers. "If you think of optimizing the paragraph for the intent of voice, make sure it's around 42 words," she advised. Page speed and backlinks appear to be factors as well, said Olga, while schema is less so. More than a third of the answers given by the Google Home devices contained no schema at all.
Voice optimization follows the traditional tactics that SEOs already prioritize — speed, links and good content. John Lincoln of Ignite Visibility spoke on the need to establish a business goal before investing in voice search and voice applications — that will help guide your strategy. "Are you e-commerce? You're going to spend more time on the Amazon side. Are you a publisher? So you'll be spending more time on Google? Think about that," said Lincoln.
Read on for a Pro Tip on understanding search intent and your daily Search Shorts.
Ginny Marvin
Editor-In-Chief
