🔍 Why you should re-examine your PPC ad copy now

Apr 02, 2020

Good morning search marketers, have you binged Tiger King yet?

If not, spoiler alert: SEO makes a cameo in episode 4. Shady SEO, that is, and it didn't end well for the Tiger King. Don't be like Tiger King.

If you're looking to brush up your coding skills, Detlef Johnson has an exercise using JavaScript to track COVID-19 to learn about asynchronous JavaScript and more in his latest SEO for the Developers segment.

And if you want to know more about BERT, check out Barry's discussion with Dawn Anderson. She authored this incredible deep-dive on the natural language learning algorithm when it first came out. Dawn talks about how Bing and Google use it differently and how SEOs may be able to use it for their own purposes.

Many of us have been working from home for several weeks now, but the majority of advertisers have not updated their ad messaging since the coronavirus pandemic started. Brad Geddes, who runs the ad testing platform AdAlysis, said on Live with Search Engine Land yesterday that he's seen little movement in ad copy updates during this period, echoing what Microsoft Advertising reported on Tuesday. There is an opportunity for those who do it right — don't be opportunistic, be empathetic, etc. Take this time to reexamine your ad copy to ensure it reflects how your company is responding to this new environment. It could help you emerge stronger.

Thanks to everyone who joined our B2B PPC-focused Live with Search Engine Land yesterday. It was a lively discussion and we'll have the recording up here today.

Keep reading for a Pro Tip from Simon Heseltine, a Mindful Moment exercise and more.

Take care,

Ginny Marvin
Editor-In-Chief

Pro Tip

SEO for recreational vehicles in a COVID-19 world

On March 11, COVID-19 was officially declared a global pandemic and since that day, various industries have seen swings in traffic to reflect the new reality. But new data comparing optimized and unoptimized sites related to the recreational and commercial vehicle market (excluding cars) have seen an uptick in traffic. And demonstrate with data validation that the change in traffic are not due to algorithm shifts. Simon Heseltine of Trader Interactive shares trends he's seeing in the market for optimized versus not-optimized marketplace sites.

Learn More »

5 critical elements for local marketing success

This guide from MarTech Today examines the market for local marketing solutions and the 5 critical elements for local marketing success: Listing Management, Local SEO, Local Landing Pages, Reputation Management, and Paid Search and Social Media. Also included are profiles of 17 leading local marketing solution vendors and capabilities comparisons.

Read more »

Mindful Moment

This is a difficult time for us all. We are sharing a mindfulness exercise daily to help those interested to take a moment to decompress and regain focus. If you have a tip or exercise to share with the community, please email me at gmarvin@thirddoormedia.com.

This week, we have suggestions from Tara Martello, a meditation and mindfulness coach based in Philadelphia. Today's exercise: Practice mindfulness with a mantra. Focusing on a word or mantra (i.e. "I am safe.") can reinforce a positive mindset.

Search Shorts

COVID-19 structured data and link disavowing.

Google structured data for COVID-19. Google has released new developer docs on how to add structured data for COVID-19 announcements to your web pages. This isn't yet visible in Search results. That will happen in the near future, but you can add data now to prepare.

Disavow. John Mueller of Google said you usually don't have to disavow regardless — we're pretty good at recognizing the usual spam and ignoring it.

Spammy links. He also said that Google Search Console does not label which links are spam and which are not.

Facebook Ads queries issues. There's an issue with Supermetrics queries for Facebook Ads causing them to fail. Please find more information here.

Stay up-to-speed on modern marketing

Join us online April 21-23 for Discover MarTech, a free virtual event featuring live keynotes from MarTech Program Chair Scott Brinker and Real Story Group's Tony Byrne, in-depth marketing technology training, and exclusive community networking.

Learn more & register for free! »