How to build an in-house search marketing team

In part 1 of this two-part series, Contributor Simon Heseltine outlines various internal organizational structures and explains how each will help build, grow and maintain an in-house search marketing team.

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Building, growing and maintaining an in-house search marketing team can be a challenge for any organization.

In Part 1 of this two-part series, “How to build an in-house search marketing team,” I will address each of those issues, as well as outline different organizational structures that will give an in-house team the best possible chance to succeed.

Getting the org structure right

When you’ve decided you want to either bring search in-house or formalize a team from staff spread throughout the organization, the first step is to determine what the search marketing team will focus on. Once that is decided, the second step is to decide how the team will work with the rest of the organization.

Typical components should include search engine optimization (SEO), pay-per-click (PPC), content, social and email and may span business-to-consumer (B2C), business-to-business ( B2B) or both.

You may also decide the team should have dedicated resources, such as developers or project management, in order to ensure that projects the team works on are implemented.

Teams and structure

The embedded team

If you have existing search functions within the organization, this is more than likely your starting point.

Product area A will have its own SEO and SEM specialists, product area B its own, and so on. There may be some cross-team collaboration and communication to share learnings, ideas and tools. While this means the teams are subject matter experts (SMEs) on the product areas they work on, it does mean that their growth opportunities, in terms of specialist knowledge and career path, may be limited.

The centralized team

With a centralized team, they all report to the same in-house search team. This can be set up in several different ways.

Each team member may have primary responsibility for one or more websites or product areas, in which case they’d be SMEs in those areas.

Typically, if the team is small, they could operate on a trouble ticket system, working on the highest-priority issues regardless of the site or product.

The matrixed team

A matrixed team is the “happy medium” between the embedded and centralized teams.

With a matrixed team, there is a central in-house search team structure, but the team members are still embedded within the various functional areas, as in the embedded structure. Typically, they are “dotted lined” into their product areas and will be treated as a member of that team but will have the structure of the in-house team to provide additional support.

Where to put search marketing

Once you’ve decided on the structure and the functional areas contained within the team, you then must decide where the team should exist in the organization. The appropriate decision here will depend on the rest of your organizational structure, the processes you have in place, the functions you place within the team and the leadership structure within the company.

There’s no sense placing the team in an area of the organization where they won’t be effectively supported.

Marketing

While this may seem like the ideal fit, given that search marketing has the word “marketing” in it, there may be reasons to keep traditional marketing and search marketing separate.

For example, keeping them separate might make sense if search marketing works only in the B2C area and traditional marketing only deals with the B2B sector. However, putting search and traditional marketing together can be beneficial and should make for greater consistency in messaging, especially if content creation is within the portfolio of the search team.

Development & IT

Given the crossover between the work that search does and technical changes or requirements from the search team via Google, Facebook and other online platforms, it may make sense to place the development and internet technology (IT) team directly within the tech organization. Keep in mind this may create a level of separation from the editorial and content side of search, so they will need to find a way to work together.

Design

If the organization has a design team, then it may make sense to involve the design team in projects from the beginning and involve the search marketing team at all stages of a project life cycle.

However, while design and the search marketing team should work together, that doesn’t mean that they should be bundled together in the organization.

Search marketing

Having a separate search marketing group within the organization means the search team can functionally work with other teams and have a voice in the organization dedicated to their wants and needs at an executive level.

The leader of this team needs to be someone who understands search marketing and can work with the leaders of the other functional areas within the organization. They also need to keep up with search engine changes and social networks.

Now that you’ve determined the appropriate organizational structure and hierarchical location for your in-house search team, the next step is to staff the team, which I’ll cover in my next article.

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Content marketing & SEO: The scalable way to be in the right place at the right time

Digital marketers agree about the importance of SEO and content marketing, but contributor Marcus Miller says they're too often kept in completely separate silos. Here's how to bring them together.

Content marketing and search engine optimization (SEO) are both titans of modern marketing, yet they’re not spoken about in the same conversation often enough.
In this article, I will take a quick look at content marketing and SEO and then detail how you can integrate these two approaches to supercharge your results from each approach.

What is content marketing?

The Content Marketing Institute defines content marketing as follows:

Content marketing is a marketing technique of creating and distributing valuable, relevant and consistent content to attract and acquire a clearly defined audience — with the objective of driving profitable customer action.

There are a few moving parts here. Typically, content created and promoted will help the reader in some way, and, in some instances, it will be purely for entertainment.
Red Bull does a great job with entertaining content marketing by aligning themselves with lots of high-octane sports. A great example is Red Bull Stratos, where Felix Baumgartner parachuted to earth from space. This is pure entertainment, yet it is well aligned with the brand.
For the average business, the content you publish is likely going to be a little more practical and related to the pains, gains and jobs that your target customer wrestles with.
At Bowler Hat, we help businesses with SEO and digital marketing, so we tend to publish content that helps people improve their SEO. We are talking mainly to business owners and in-house SEOs.
This exposure helps us demonstrate our expertise and build relationships with companies that we can help. It’s marketing, but, in a nice and non-sales-focused way. It’s marketing that feels good and not pushy.

What is SEO?

I am going to assume that most Search Engine Land readers will be satisfied with that, as they probably are quite familiar with SEO, but there is a more detailed definition here if you’d like one.
While the definition above works for our purposes, all too often we see small business SEOs concerned only with ranking for the big and obvious commercial terms. This is inarguably important, but because everyone wants to rank for the big obvious terms, this can be super-competitive, both in the organic results and within the paid placements.
Where content marketing on search engines can be most helpful is when it puts you in front of customers before they are comparing potential suppliers. Establishing contact with a potential customer at this point gives you a chance to illustrate your credibility and generate leads earlier in the buyer journey. This type of helpful thought-leadership content is also one of the easier types to promote, so it can help you build links that can naturally improve your rankings on those coveted commercial terms.

Content marketing & SEO

Marketing is all about being in the right place at the right time. And in 2017, when people have a question, they typically ask it on one of the major search engines (well, mostly Google).
Yet many content marketing efforts rely on social media or email to get the message out there. These channels can be powerful. But they rely on the hope that your social post, ad or email gets in front of a prospective customer at just the time when they are looking for your products or services. Sure, targeting has gotten more sophisticated, but it doesn’t really compare to search engine marketing, which works so well because we know our listings are seen right when people are searching for that information.
Having your content found by prospective customers on Google is the holy grail. It is your content at the right place and the right time. It is truly scalable, and when it comes organic listings, it doesn’t come with a cost per click.

How to get your content marketing found on Google

You have two basic options here:

1. Publish on a highly authoritative site where the content will naturally rank well.
2. Build the authority of your own site and your published content.

Option #1 is fairly self-explanatory As an example, I recently published an article on ways to measure the success of SEO right here on Search Engine Land. I focused on keywords that were variations on “SEO KPIs” and “measuring SEO,” and the article naturally ranked from first to third for the majority of these terms.
Now, it was an informative and well-researched article (blowing my own trumpet here) that I felt was better than anything else out there. It was also published on an authoritative and highly relevant site. No link building or anything else was needed. The content itself and the authority of the site it was placed on were enough for that article to rank well.
Option #2 is a little harder, as your site is isn’t likely to be nearly as authoritative as an established site in its niche. So, you have a few jobs to do here before you can get content on your own site to rank.
First, you absolutely, positively need to get the SEO basics dialed in. Then you need to build authority for your overall site (domain authority). And you will need to promote those articles individually (page authority).
Both of these approaches have merit. Publishing on third-party sites is faster, easier, and lends you credibility. Driving people to your own site is powerful for brand awareness, and you have more control of the next steps (remarketing, lead generation, email, social and so forth).
Both approaches require you to make an investment and to be consistent — but what worthwhile marketing does not?

How SEO supercharges content marketing

This is fairly obvious. When your content ranks well organically, you get free exposure in the natural search results. This improves brand awareness, drives engagement with your business and helps set more people on the pathway to profitable customer actions.
Your content appears in the right place at the right time with no associated cost per click. That’s some marketing gold right there.

How content marketing supercharges SEO

What kind of outbound links do you personally click? I am not talking about internal navigation, but rather the links that take you from one site to another.
Typically, these are links within the body of an article. If I were talking about Google PageRank, I would likely link to the Wikipedia PageRank page to provide more detail. This link enriches and improves the linking page and provides a useful resource and direction for the reader. And sure enough, informational resources like Wikipedia have millions of links. All without doing any SEO.
Now, most businesses are not Wikipedia, and this is not “Field of Dreams.” So, we can’t just build it and wait for the links to come. We must promote the content when it is created. Outreach, guest posts and digital PR are your allies here, and you can supplement these efforts with some paid promotion and content amplification.
The best approach here is to identify well-linked content in your sector, and then create an improved version of that content. This way, if you keep a list of who linked to the original content, you have a great place to start for initial outreach. And you are also armed with the knowledge that what you are promoting is worthy of those links — which is central to this whole approach.
In the simplest terms, content marketing supercharges your SEO by making link building easier.

SEO vs. content marketing

We see this antagonistic mentality all the time in digital marketing. SEO vs. PPC. Local SEO vs. Organic. SEO vs. Content Marketing. SEO vs. Social.
Smart digital marketers don’t think like this. All channels have a part to play, and the best strategies are often those that strategically integrate channels in a way that they support each other.
This is certainly the case with SEO and content.

• SEO helps get your content and business in front of more people.
• Content marketing helps you build authority and improves your SEO.

Think integration rather than silos, and all your marketing will thank you for it.

SEO & content marketing strategy

So, to quickly summarize here, we have the following strategy to help drive more traffic to the content on your own site.
1. Create great content
2. Promote that content with:

• outreach
• digital PR
• guest blogging

Strategically this is relatively simple. You need to be realistic and patient. If your content ranks well in organic search, it can be a huge win — but it won’t be quick or easy. This is marketing that shoots for the moon!

SEO & content marketing caveats

This approach will not be right for every business or every situation.
If you are a small local plumber looking to pick up several new customers each week, then the effort to produce plumbing content that ranks highly in Google is likely not worth your time. You would be better served by doing some PPC, SEO and local SEO. You may also be able to use a more targeted approach to content marketing using social media advertising.
If you have a scalable business model and are not geographically bound, then nothing is going to be more scalable than a combined content marketing and SEO strategy. You will be able to drive more awareness and engagement — without rapidly scaling costs — as you reach a more diverse and geographically broad audience.
Remember that SEO is not always the right approach if the objectives, budget or time scales say otherwise. But if you don’t get started now, you will fall ever farther behind, and when SEO and content is a good fit, it is hard to beat.

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Bing Providing Detailed Answers From Third-Party Web Sites Like Google

Bing seems to now be providing detailed answers to your queries at the top of their search results, pulled/sourced from third-party web sites, much like how Google does with their knowledge graph answers. This step will likely anger publishers as much as when Google started doing this.
@TheRomit spotted that a search in Bing for [rebuild spotlight index] returns step by step instructions taken from Apple’s support web page on how to take the necessary steps to solve the problem.
Here is a picture:

Bing started doing these types of answers back in 2014 but offering full form answers is taking this to the next level. A place Google went a while back, where publishers are not happy about Google or any search engine taking a copy of their content and displaying all of it on the search results page, leaving the searcher with no need to click over to their web site.

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Google’s Mobile-Friendly Update Is Rolling Out Right Now

Google confirmed in a blog post that the mobile-friendly algorithm update is rolling out now. The company also reaffirmed that this update doesn’t equally apply to all devices or results:

• Affects only search rankings on mobile devices
• Affects search results in all languages globally
• Applies to individual pages, not entire websites

Google has put together another FAQs document for webmasters. The company says that webmasters or publishers won’t necessarily see an immediate impact and that it will “be a week or so before it makes its way to all pages in the index.”
Google recommends using its mobile-friendly URL testing tool to determine whether Google will regard your site/pages as ready. There are many more helpful links on in the FAQs.

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Why You Must Account For Seasonality In SEO & SEM Projections

Digital marketers must often make projections when creating strategies for search engine optimization, PPC, social media and even conversion rate optimization. This usually happens when a client or prospect asks for some idea of what can be achieved when signing up for the service. Or for an in-house SEO or SEM, it would occur at the beginning of a new project or campaign.

After years of doing online marketing for many large and sophisticated projects, we have developed a pretty good system for putting together client projections. While I will not reveal our model in detail today, I will provide the basics and discuss why skipping seasonality implications can become a major issue.

Let’s start by talking briefly about online traffic and seasonality. In certain industries, the traffic plummets some months and surges in others. Consider an eCard company or online floral retailer. What do you think their traffic looks like in the week leading up to Valentine’s Day, compared to the week after? I’ll give you a hint: It is way higher.

Due to this fact of operating a seasonal online business, marketing professionals have to account for the historical business numbers. The agency or in-house marketer can’t take credit for a surge in traffic when it is clearly seasonal, and they shouldn’t be looked down upon for a seasonal drop.

Let’s now cover some background on reporting and SEO projections. Then we can get into seasonality.

Always Know The Average Baseline Of Traffic For The Previous Year

It is nice to have baseline traffic numbers that you can reference any time. This is more of just an “FYI” number so that you know the mean of traffic. To get the mean, take your total annual traffic and divide it by 12. You now know your average traffic number each month.

Once you have this information, you can be aware of where your client is in comparison to this number in any given month. It’s a good number to have in your head for your own personal knowledge and the client’s.

Look At The Year-Over-Year Increase, Not The Traffic Number

Of course, one of the most important things you need to consider is the percentage increase year-over-year. If your client is experiencing a 10% year-over-year traffic increase in month 1 and month 2, that means your traffic growth is flat. If you are at 12% year-over-year in month 3, you have grown 2% since the year started. It’s all about understanding these margins and if there is margin growth based on your baseline of growth that already exists.

Of course, you need to be careful how much weight you give to increases and decreases. SEO can be fickle, as we all know. Some months are up and others can be down — the main goal should be to see a clear upward trend over the course of the contract, with positive year-over-year numbers.

Have Go-To Third-Party Tracking Tools Installed

One thing that is nice about third-party tracking tools is that they do not generally take seasonality into account. Instead, they look at monthly averages for keyword traffic numbers, and rankings simply are what they are. So, if you have these tools to rely on, you can get a gauge of how the account growth is looking without muddling it with seasonal fluctuations in an analytics account.

Be Careful With The Period-Over-Period Reports The Same Year

A lot of big companies, especially those with investors, are really big on quarterly reports. (It is just what business-minded individuals are used to looking at.) These reports generally look at quarter-over-quarter growth numbers.

There is nothing wrong with this as long as everyone understands the industry and how the seasonal numbers relate to it. If the businesses biggest quarter is Q1, how do you think that Q2 report is going to look? It is going to look down. Now, if the investors don’t understand the seasonal implications, you could lose that client.

On the opposite side, it is the responsibility of the internet marketing company to be honest if it is the other way around. If Q2 is the biggest time of the year, the company should not be taking credit for seasonal growth in Q2 that seems too good to be true when looking at quarter-over-quarter.

Be honest and clear in this situation; it builds trust and is just the right way to do business. Also, make sure to note that the year-over-year numbers are always the main indicators of success.

How To Do The SEO Projections When Considering Seasonality

Now that we have all of that out of the way, we can talk about how to do projections for SEO that take seasonality into account.

First, determine how much you think you can grow the traffic each month based on the strategies you are going to implement. Do you see 1,000 pages in a template that you can unblock and optimize on a high domain authority site? Or perhaps you have a plan to add 10 new pages for highly targeted keywords a month?

Whatever your strategy, pick the projects you’ll be doing, figure out the potential traffic numbers, and then provide low, medium and high success metrics. This will allow you to see how much traffic you can feasibly add to the site.

Every SEO has their own way of approaching a project, so I will leave this part up to you. But generally, you should be looking at the number of keywords you are targeting, the rankings you think you can get for those keywords, the estimated CTR for that position, and the average conversion rate you expect for that traffic. Once you know these numbers, tie the estimated sales back to the average revenue per sale and the profit margin per sale. Add up all total profit and back out your fees — you now have your ROI number. Keep this model in mind for the next step.

Now we will talk about the seasonality part. Take these organic traffic growth numbers and add them to a monthly calendar that spans the length of the projections. Next, overlay the additional traffic you will be adding on to last year’s numbers, making sure to do this for low, high and medium. Now you will have 2 things:

1. Low, medium and high traffic growth numbers separate from the analytics account numbers.
2. Low, medium and high traffic numbers added to monthly analytics. This will take into account seasonality.

Make sure to follow the steps above to get all your numbers on the low medium and high scale such as increase in transactions/leads, revenue growth, profit growth and ROI.

A Few Important Things To Keep In Mind

1. Traffic will not always increase when looking at period-over-period reports for the same year due to seasonality, as we discussed. Make sure you are clear about this with the client.
2. Things happen to jeopardize data all the time. Did the website break? Was there a penalty? Did the analytics tracking code get deleted? Did someone block the site in the robots.txt file or slip a noindex nofollow into a page they were not supposed to? If you have any major errors or outliers in the analytics account from the previous year, that basically makes that baseline of traffic useless. You need to account for that. Also, it is very important to be clear about why the numbers are the way they are with the client. Make sure to note any anomalies in your reports.
3. Make sure you also have a landing page include filter in analytics that reports on the projects you’re working on. I like to create shortcuts that provide insight on the pages we have actually targeted/touched. That way, if something happens to another section of the site, I can show growth to the sections we have worked on.
4. Make sure you set up your tracking tools right. If you are using a third-party tool to track rankings over time and general estimated traffic growth, that can really come in handy if the analytics install is jeopardized for some reason. The more analytics programs you have to turn to, the better. Make sure you have a good combo of third-party and first-party tools. Here is a list of tracking tools I worked really hard on.

Be Honest, Know Your Data, Understand The Concepts, And You Will Win

At the end of the day, you need to get things implemented on-site and off-site to see SEO traffic growth. Make sure you do great work, stay on top of the project, and have the right strategies in place. Track everything you do with the most detail possible and provide low, medium and high projections that are feasible, take into account return on investment and seasonality.

The reason this post is so important to me is that I know we have all been in a situation where numbers seem lower, but it is clearly due to seasonality. We all need to be aware of how seasonality plays into traffic, account for it and be clear with people on the project why numbers are what they are. Now if you can take that a step further and work the implications of seasonality into your SEO projections, you are a rockstar!

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Everything You Need To Know About Google’s New Stance On Mobile

There’s no mistaking the fact that Google is driving the mobile revolution. Google is the world’s largest mobile platform provider (Android). Google is the world’s largest mobile search provider. Google has the largest mobile app store. In other words, Google gets to make the calls on mobile.
But things are getting even bigger. Google isn’t satisfied with the biggest piece of the pie for devices, search, and apps. They might eventually own the airwaves, too (maybe). The purpose of this article is to tell you what’s going down with Google’s mobile stance, and what you need to do in response.

Google Will Revamp Their Search Algorithm To Favor Mobile-Friendly Sites

According to Google Webmaster Central, Google will be rolling out the most significant mobile algorithm change to date:

Starting April 21, we will be expanding our use of mobile-friendliness as a ranking signal.

In just a few short days, you’re going to witness a huge algo upset. In fact, a Googler noted that this change will have more of an impact than Penguin or Panda.
What is a mobile-friendly site? Thankfully, it’s pretty easy to find out. Just run your website through Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test page.

Unfortunately, the test is not without its flaws. Google admits it with its prominent placement of a feedback form. (The issues have prompted some robust discussion in the Google Product forums.) Nonetheless, the mobile friendly test is generally a useful gauge of a site’s mobile performance.
Another method of checking your site is to search for it on your mobile device. If the SERP entry bears the “mobile friendly” label, then you’re in Google’s good graces.

Finally, you should run your site through Google’s Mobile Usability Report (in Google Webmaster Tools) to discover any relevant recommendations that will improve mobile use.

The Algorithm Change Will Be “Significant”

I’m trying not to read too much into the announcement, but I can’t help but notice that ominous word, “significant.”

This change will affect mobile searches in all languages worldwide and will have a significant impact in our search results.

What will be the actual impact of an algo change that is “significant”? It’s anyone’s guess. Out of curiosity, I searched the Webmaster blog archives for all occurrences of the term “significant.” What are some other things that Google called “significant”?

• Crawling – 2012
• Markup – 2010
• Linking – 2009
• Panda 1.0 – 2012

A survey like mine is facile, of course, but I think we need to assess and prepare for something that Google deems “significant.”
Already, we know that this update will be bigger than Panda or Penguin. We also know that Google considers mobile to be so significant that they are working to dominate nearly all of its manifestations. With this search update, we should brace ourselves for a tectonic adjustment in the way that mobile search functions.
My basic predictions are that non-optimized pages will virtually drop from mobile rankings and possibly desktop rankings. I predict that any page lacking mobile optimization will cease to rank for head terms. I predict that SERP results on page 1 for longtail keywords above a certain search frequency threshold will feature mobile-friendly only pages.

The Algorithm Assesses Each Page Individually

A notable feature of the mobile algorithm is that it analyzes mobile compatibility on a page-by-page basis, rather than a website-wide basis. This announcement came from Google’s Gary Illyes during his SMX West presentation and was areported by Search Engine Land.
What does this mean practically? If your site has some mobile-optimized pages, but some non-optimized pages, then Google will look at them separately and promote the one that is optimized. They won’t “penalize” (if that’s the right term) an entire site based on the off chance that a few pages aren’t optimized.
Realistically, though, if a site is responsive and well-designed, then this shouldn’t be too much of an issue. I’m sure there are some sites with a few optimized pages and a few that aren’t, but generally speaking, an entire site is either mobile friendly or not.

The Algorithm Operates In Real-Time

Another of Gary’s remarks had to do with the real-time nature of the mobile algorithm. Here’s how Search Engine Land reported Gary’s announcement.

On the Mobile SEO panel that I [Barry Schwartz] moderated, we asked Gary when do webmasters need to get their sites mobile-friendly for them not to be impacted by the April 21st launch. Gary explained that the algorithm runs in real-time, so technically, you can do it any day, and as soon as Google picks up on the change, the site will start to benefit from the new mobile-friendly algorithm change.

Obviously, Google can only assess a site’s mobile friendliness when it crawls the page and indexes it for search. At this point, your site is scored. If the page is not mobile friendly on April 21, but becomes mobile-friendly on April 25, then we can assume that Google’s next crawl should be able to identify it as such.

What’s Good For Desktop Is Also Good For Mobile…Sort Of

An additional insight from Google’s John Mueller is that Google mixes some of the desktop and mobile ranking signals. Page speed, for example, is blended in its impact on both desktop and mobile search. Additionally, it seems true that Google’s top heavy algorithm also shares the desktop/mobile impact.
We can safely assume that some of the features that are good for desktop are equally good for mobile, assuming the page has a mobile-friendly design. But keep in mind that the algorithm may begin to differentiate the various factors that are currently bundled as one and the same. Because of the vastly different platforms, load time, layout, etc., between desktop and mobile, it would make sense for it to do so.
Apparently, Google is experimenting with different algorithm signals that are device-dependent.

App Indexing Is Now Factored Into Search Results

App indexing is a new feature of the algorithm that will be exclusive to sites with associated Android apps. This feature is already in play, according to Google Webmaster Central:

Starting today, we will begin to use information from indexed apps as a factor in ranking for signed-in users who have the app installed. As a result, we may now surface content from indexed apps more prominently in search.

The purpose of this feature is probably to tighten the connection between mobile search and mobile application. Eventually, there will probably be little distinction between the two. Bridging the gap via search is a logical choice. Google recommends the following steps in order to facilitate app indexing:

• Add deep link support and specify how to reach specific content within your app.
• Verify your app’s official website on Google Play Console.
• Provide deep links for each web page that has a corresponding deep link, either on each page of your website or in your sitemaps.
• Check for errors in Webmaster Tools so you can fix them.

Conclusion: What Should You Do About It?

Though it may be onerous to kowtow, you’re going to have to adapt in the new mobile-centric digital marketing universe. Right now, Google leads the way. They’ve given the command – we have to follow.

1. As a first course of action, make your website mobile friendly. Responsive is best.
2. Second, address any mobile usability issues in Google Webmaster Tools.
3. Third, if you have an Android app associated with your site, get it deeplinked and indexed as soon as possible.
4. Fourth, monitor your metrics carefully up to and following the rollout of the April 21 algo change.

Finally, let’s keep learning, listening, and testing so that we can adapt to the changing face of search. What do you plan to do to your websites prior to April 21?

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Google’s Steady Gains In Paid Search Location Tracking A Win-Win

Geography-based bid adjustments are powerful tools that allow advertisers to optimize bids based on a number of different factors related to a user’s location. Whether using
Whether using proximity bidding, average household income (HHI) levers, or standard geographic location targets, advertisers now have more ways than ever before to update bids for users that meet different geographic criteria.
However, it’s important to note that these tools are only as effective as the location tracking capabilities of the search engines allow for. This is because the share of total traffic that can be properly attributed to a location becomes smaller as the type of location becomes more granular.
To this end, it appears that Google has been making big gains over the past year in terms of how much traffic it can track at more granular levels, which has implications for a number of its initiatives, including mobile and in-store tracking.

Share Of AdWords Traffic Tracked To ZIP Code Climbing

One method of gauging Google’s ability to track user location is to compare what share of U.S. traffic it can roll up to the ZIP code level in the Most Specific Location column of its Geographic reports (found in the Dimensions tab of the UI) to the share of traffic that is reported at the city level in the City column of the same report. This data is also available through the API.
As a ZIP code is the most specific location that will currently populate in the Most Specific Location column, the difference gives us an idea of how many users would not be targeted if a campaign targeted, say, all of the ZIP codes in a city compared to the city itself.
Here’s how the share of U.S. traffic rolled up to these levels of location granularity shake out across Merkle|RKG’s advertiser base:



In Q1 of 2015, Google was able to track 71% of desktop and tablet traffic and 67% of mobile traffic to a zip code, compared to tracking 97% of desktop and tablet traffic and 93% of mobile traffic to a city. The remaining traffic gets rolled up to less granular location types such as state or country.
There are a few interesting things to note about this data:

1. Phones have always lagged behind desktop and tablet devices in terms of how well Google can track user location both at the city and ZIP code levels, despite Google’s Android OS accounting for 38% of all paid search phone traffic in Q1 of this year according to RKG’s data.
2. The share of phone traffic attributed to both ZIP code and city levels took a dip in Q3 of last year. We’re not really sure what would have caused this decrease, but the blip in the data exposes how temporary issues with Google’s tracking can have an impact on advertisers’ ability to target users based on location and the resulting data.
3. Google is making BIG strides in tracking users at a more granular level. This is particularly true of mobile users, who Google was 34% more likely to be able to attribute to a ZIP code in Q1 of 2015 compared to the same quarter last year. Google was 23% more likely to be able to attribute desktop and tablet users to a ZIP code year-over-year.

Google’s ability to track users as granularly as possible is important to advertisers and to the search engine giant itself for a few reasons.

Better Tracking = Better Bidding for Advertisers

Advertisers using geographic location modifiers to adjust bids based on location want to be able to influence bids for as much of their traffic that matches to those different geographic locations as possible.
More granular location types are also tied to geographic attributes more specific to the population of that area (ex. average income of a ZIP code much more useful than the average income of a city), so advertisers want to embrace the most granular targeting possibilities.
However, they need to be confident that targeting a campaign to more granular location types won’t result in large shares of the population not getting targeted due to Google’s inability to track them to that level of location granularity.
To both of these ends, any improvement in search engines’ ability to track user location is a good thing, and makes not only standard geographic location targets more effective, but also makes tools like Google’s HHI bidding levers (which rely on ZIP code level location) and proximity bidding more valuable.
Better bids based on location result in a more efficient allocation of spend for advertisers, and should lead to an increase in spend overall going to Google – a win-win.

Improved Local Ad Serving

For obvious reasons, both Google and advertisers want to serve the most relevant ad copy possible to searchers with local intent. Particularly with campaigns targeted to very small radiuses around businesses or other physical locations, granular location tracking is pivotal to providing users with the best experience possible.
Particularly with campaigns targeted to very small radiuses around businesses or other physical locations, granular location tracking is pivotal to providing users with the best experience possible.
As many searches with local intent take place on mobile devices, it’s been especially promising to see Google’s advancements in tracking traffic from these devices to granular locations.

Some In-Store Tracking is Geo-Reliant

Google rolled store visit tracking based on user proximity to advertiser locations out of Beta in December as part of Estimated Total Conversions. Tracking those users which have Location History activated on their smartphones to instances when they arrive at a storefront, Google then extrapolates these tracked visits to provide estimates for the total number of brick and mortar visitors with a paid search click.
Tracking those users which have Location History activated on their smartphones to instances when they arrive at a storefront, Google then extrapolates these tracked visits to provide estimates for the total number of brick and mortar visitors with a paid search click.
These estimates are obviously heavily reliant on granular location tracking, and will only become more reliable as Google is able to track more users to brick and mortar locations. This is especially important for mobile, which typically sees a bigger lift from accounting for offline impact than desktop and tablet devices. For example, one RKG advertiser tracking these in-store visits sees one in-store visit for every three mobile conversions, compared to one visit for every ten desktop conversions.
This is especially important for mobile, which typically sees a bigger lift from accounting for offline impact than desktop and tablet devices. For example, one RKG advertiser tracking these in-store visits sees one in-store visit for every three mobile conversions, compared to one visit for every ten desktop conversions.

Conclusion

Hyper-segmentation and targeting is becoming increasingly important for advertisers as we strive to take account optimizations to the next level. However, these optimizations rely on the technology behind the scenes being able to correctly identify and bucket user context at a granular level.
As such, advertisers need to be aware of just how good search engines are at attributing not only geographic location, but also more user-specific information like gender or age.
When a campaign is set to target all of the 18- to 25-year-old males in the zip code of a college town, those ads aren’t actually reaching all of the 18- to 25-year-old males in that ZIP code. They’re only being served to the users for which the platform can assign an age, gender, and ZIP code level location to, and which meet the specified criteria.
Thus, advertisers may want to consider adding in “safety nets” to catch relevant searches that may not be tracked as granularly as the level they are targeting. For example, adding a city level target to a campaign targeting a radius around a store.
As Google will respect the most granular location target to which it can properly attribute the search, the most specific bid modifiers will be used for those searches which are tracked to the radius around the store, while the city target will allow the campaign to also garner those clicks which take place nearby but which can’t be assigned a location by Google as granular as the radius specified.
The good (GREAT) news is that Google has been making steady progress in terms of how well it can track user location, and is making particularly strong gains in the area of mobile devices, which have been harder to track than tablet and desktop devices in terms of granular location attribution. This progress will only continue to make for a better experience for users, more effective optimizations for advertisers, and increased spend heading Google’s way.

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