Author: Mark Sanborn

Mark is recognized globally as an expert on leadership, customer service and organizational performance.

A member of the National Speakers Association Speaker Hall of Fame, he is the author of 8 books including the international bestseller, The Fred Factor: How Passion in Your Work and Life Can Turn the Ordinary
Into the Extraordinary.

Mark teaches his clients to BE EXTRAORDINARY.

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In today’s world of work, being inclusive as a leader isn’t optional. In many companies I work with and consult, inclusion is used as a mere buzzword that doesn’t translate into any tangible behavioral change. The reason I feel leaders who preach inclusion and not practice it is because it is hard. Paying lip service to inclusion may give you some brownie points, but practicing inclusion leads to remarkable results. 

Practicing Inclusion is Transformative

When Satya Nadella took charge as Microsoft’s CEO, the company was struggling with fairly rigid culture and stagnation. Nadella emphasized the importance of being a learning leader, adopting a growth mindset and working collaboratively with empathy. He worked hard at breaking down silos, encouraged employees to learn from each other, be customer centric, embrace diverse perspectives and work as one team to accomplish common goals. He conducted regular town-halls, institutionalized mentoring programs, conducted open forums to elicit ideas and concerns.

“Inclusion is not a matter of political correctness. It is the key to growth.”– Jesse Jackson

The culture shifted over the years, so did the outcomes. Microsoft’s Azure cloud platform was accomplished through a rigorous cross-functional collaboration. Under Nadella’s leadership, Microsoft transformed into a dynamic and forward-thinking organization resulting in growth and innovation.

Nadella’s story underlines what research from McKinsey & Co. suggests: That companies with diverse leadership are 33% more likely to achieve above-average profitability. 

The Boldly Inclusive Leader

In this context, I read Minette Norman’s book “The Boldly Inclusive Leader” with great interest. The book is a compelling guide for leaders to foster a more inclusive workplace. Norman provides actionable strategies and insights to build an inclusive culture through foundations of continuous learning, active listening, authentic communication, and creating psychologically safe environment for people to thrive. For me, Norman’s insights on being self-aware and being willing to embrace discomfort stood out. She reframes difficult experiences as “learning opportunities” and encourages leaders to reflect on their biases when dealing with people.

A Sketchnote on What Boldy Inclusive Leaders Do

The book is a must read if you are looking for a powerful and actionable guide to being more inclusive. Here is a sketchnote synthesizing some of the key ideas that truly stood out for me:

Updated: Visual Leadership Pack HD Sketchnotes

If you liked the sketchnote summary above, check out the Visual Leadership Pack of HD Sketchnotes – a compilation of high-resolution sketchnotes with 90+ powerful (and timeless) ideas to elevate your leadership and learning game.

Artificial intelligence (AI) can now detect whether your cat is in pain by looking at its face, using an app built by vets and developers in Japan.

The AI app was trained using 6,000 pictures of cats, and developers say it is more than 95% accurate.

The head of the Animal Medical Centre at Nihon University worked on the app. He said vets like him can tell to a certain degree whether an animal is in pain or not, but it’s harder for owners.

“More than 70% of elderly cats have arthritis or pain, but only 2% of them actually go to a hospital,” said Professor Edamura.

“So rather than a final diagnosis, we use [the app] as a tool to make owners aware of whether the situation is normal or not.”

More than 230,000 people have used the app since it launched in Japan last year.

Mayumi Kitakata lives in Tokyo with her 14-year-old cat Chi. She uses the app to read his face each day.

“He is at an age where more and more diseases are going to appear,” said Ms Kitakata.

Image:
The head of Nihon University Animal Medical Center, Professor Kazuya Edamura, gives a lecture to students on the diagnosis of pain in cats. Pic: Reuters

“So being able to consult the vet but still reduce the number of visits to the hospital is very important for him and for me.”

Read more from Sky News:Scottish Swifties danced so hard they set off earthquake monitorsNASA accidentally broadcasts simulation of astronaut in distress

Pets are very popular in the country, with the Japan Pet Food Association estimating there were almost 16 million pet cats and dogs in the country last year, more than the number of children under 15.

The app, called CatsMe!, was developed by Careology and researchers at Nihon University.

Google’s Gary Illyes answered a question about how to notify Google that someone is poisoning their backlink profile with “toxic links” which is a problem that many people have been talking about for at least fifteen years.

Question About Alerting Google To Toxic Links

Gary narrated the question:

“Someone’s asking, how to alert Google of sabotage via toxic links?”

And this is Gary’s answer:

I know what I would do: I’d ignore those links.

Generally Google is really, REALLY good at ignoring links that are irrelevant to the site they’re pointing at. If you feel like it, you can always disavow those “toxic” links, or file a spam report.

Disavow Links If You Feel Like It

Gary linked to Google’s explainer about disavowing links where it’s explained that the disavow tool is for a site owner to tell Google about links that they are responsible for in some way, like paid links or some other link scheme.

This is what it advises:

“If you have a manual action against your site for unnatural links to your site, or if you think you’re about to get such a manual action (because of paid links or other link schemes that violate our quality guidelines), you should try to remove the links from the other site to your site. If you can’t remove those links yourself, or get them removed, then you should disavow the URLs of the questionable pages or domains that link to your website.”

Google suggests that a link disavow is only necessary when two conditions are met:

“You have a considerable number of spammy, artificial, or low-quality links pointing to your site,AND
The links have caused a manual action, or likely will cause a manual action, on your site.”

Both of the above conditions must be met in order to file a valid link disavow tool.

Origin Of The Phrase Toxic Links

As Google became better at penalizing sites for low quality links and paid links, some in the highly competitive gambling industry started creating low quality links to sabotage their competitors. The practice was called negative SEO.

The phrase toxic link is something that was never heard of until after the Penguin link updates in 2012 which required penalized sites to remove all the paid and low quality links they created and then disavow the rest. An industry grew around disavowing links and it was that industry that invented the phrase Toxic Links for use in their marketing.

Confirmation That Google Is Able To Ignore Links

I have shared this anecdote before and I’ll share it here again. Someone I knew contacted me and said that their site lost rankings from negative SEO links. I took a look and their site had a ton of really nasty looking links. So out of curiosity (and because I knew that the site was this person’s main income), I emailed someone at Google Mountain View headquarters about it. That person checked it and replied that the site didn’t lose rankings because of the links. They lost rankings because of a Panda update related content issue.

That was around 2012 and it showed me how good Google was at ignoring links. Now, if Google was that good at ignoring really bad links back then, they’re probably better at it now, twelve years later now that they have the spam brain AI.

Listen to the question and answer at the 8:22 minute mark:

Featured Image by Shutterstock/Krakenimages.com

Search is evolving at an incredible pace and new features, formats, and even new search engines are popping up within the space.

Google’s algorithm still prioritizes backlinks when ranking websites. If you want your website to be visible in search results, you must account for backlinks and your backlink profile.

A healthy backlink profile requires a diverse backlink profile.

In this guide, we’ll examine how to build and maintain a diverse backlink profile that powers your website’s search performance.

What Does A Healthy Backlink Profile Look Like?

As Google states in its guidelines, it primarily crawls pages through links from other pages linked to your pages, acquired through promotion and naturally over time.

In practice, a healthy backlink profile can be divided into three main areas: the distribution of link types, the mix of anchor text, and the ratio of followed to nofollowed links.

Let’s look at these areas and how they should look within a healthy backlink profile.

Distribution Of Link Types

One aspect of your backlink profile that needs to be diversified is link types.

It looks unnatural to Google to have predominantly one kind of link in your profile, and it also indicates that you’re not diversifying your content strategy enough.

Some of the various link types you should see in your backlink profile include:

Anchor text links.
Image links.
Redirect links.
Canonical links.

Here is an example of the breakdown of link types at my company, Whatfix (via Semrush):

Most links should be anchor text links and image links, as these are the most common ways to link on the web, but you should see some of the other types of links as they are picked up naturally over time.

Mix Of Anchor Text

Next, ensure your backlink profile has an appropriate anchor text variance.

Again, if you overoptimize for a specific type of anchor text, it will appear suspicious to search engines like Google and could have negative repercussions.

Here are the various types of anchor text you might find in your backlink profile:

Branded anchor text – Anchor text that is your brand name or includes your brand name.
Empty – Links that have no anchor text.
Naked URLs – Anchor text that is a URL (e.g., www.website.com).
Exact match keyword-rich anchor text – Anchor text that exactly matches the keyword the linked page targets (e.g., blue shoes).
Partial match keyword-rich anchor text – Anchor text that partially or closely matches the keyword the linked page targets (e.g., “comfortable blue footwear options”).
Generic anchor text – Anchor text such as “this website” or “here.”

To maintain a healthy backlink profile, aim for a mix of anchor text within a similar range to this:

Branded anchor text – 35-40%.
Partial match keyword-rich anchor text – 15-20%.
Generic anchor text -10-15%.
Exact match keyword-rich anchor text – 5-10%.
Naked URLs – 5-10%.
Empty – 3-5%.

This distribution of anchor text represents a natural mix of differing anchor texts. It is common for the majority of anchors to be branded or partially branded because most sites that link to your site will default to your brand name when linking. It also makes sense that the following most common anchors would be partial-match keywords or generic anchor text because these are natural choices within the context of a web page.

Exact-match anchor text is rare because it only happens when you are the best resource for a specific term, and the site owner knows your page exists.

Ratio Of Followed Vs. Nofollowed Backlinks

Lastly, you should monitor the ratio of followed vs. nofollowed links pointing to your website.

If you need a refresher on what nofollowed backlinks are or why someone might apply the nofollow tag to a link pointing to your site, check out Google’s guide on how to qualify outbound links to Google.

Nofollow attributes should only be applied to paid links or links pointing to a site the linking site doesn’t trust.

While it is not uncommon or suspicious to have some nofollow links (people misunderstand the purpose of the nofollow attribute all the time), a healthy backlink profile will have far more followed links.

You should aim for a ratio of 80%:20% or 70%:30% in favor of followed links. For example, here is what the followed vs. nofollowed ratio looks like for my company’s backlink profile (according to Ahrefs):

You may see links with other rel attributes, such as UGC or Sponsored.

The “UGC” attribute tags links from user-generated content, while the “Sponsored” attribute tags links from sponsored or paid sources. These attributes are slightly different than the nofollow tag, but they essentially work the same way, letting Google know these links aren’t trusted or endorsed by the linking site. You can simply group these links in with nofollowed links when calculating your ratio.

Importance Of Diversifying Your Backlink Profile

So why is it important to diversify your backlink profile anyway? Well, there are three main reasons you should consider:

Avoiding overoptimization.
Diversifying traffic sources.
And finding new audiences.

Let’s dive into each of these.

Avoiding Overoptimization

First and foremost, diversifying your backlink profile is the best way to protect yourself from overoptimization and the damaging penalties that can come with it.

As SEO pros, our job is to optimize websites to improve performance, but overoptimizing in any facet of our strategy – backlinks, keywords, structure, etc. – can result in penalties that limit visibility within search results.

In the previous section, we covered the elements of a healthy backlink profile. If you stray too far from that model, your site might look suspicious to search engines like Google and you could be handed a manual or algorithmic penalty, suppressing your rankings in search.

Considering how regularly Google updates its search algorithm these days (and how little information surrounds those updates), you could see your performance tank and have no idea why.

This is why it’s so important to keep a watchful eye on your backlink profile and how it’s shaping up.

Diversifying Traffic Sources

Another reason to cultivate a diverse backlink profile is to ensure you’re diversifying your traffic sources.

Google penalties come swiftly and can often be a surprise. If you have all your eggs in that basket when it comes to traffic, your site will suffer badly and might need help to recover.

However, diversifying your traffic sources (search, social, email, etc.) will mitigate risk – similar to a stock portfolio – as you’ll have other traffic sources to provide a steady flow of visitors if another source suddenly dips.

Part of building a diverse backlink profile is acquiring a diverse set of backlinks and backlink types, and this strategy will also help you find differing and varied sources of traffic.

Finding New Audiences

Finally, building a diverse backlink profile is essential, as doing so will also help you discover new audiences.

If you acquire links from the same handful of websites and platforms, you will need help expanding your audience and building awareness for your website.

While it’s important to acquire links from sites that cater to your existing audience, you should also explore ways to build links that can tap into new audiences. The best way to do this is by casting a wide net with various link acquisition tactics and strategies.

A diverse backlink profile indicates a varied approach to SEO and marketing that will help bring new visitors and awareness to your site.

Building A Diverse Backlink Profile

So that you know what a healthy backlink profile looks like and why it’s important to diversify, how do you build diversity into your site’s backlink profile?

This comes down to your link acquisition strategy and the types of backlinks you actively pursue. To guide your strategy, let’s break link building into three main categories:

Foundational links.
Content promotion.
Community involvement.

Here’s how to approach each area.

Foundational Links

Foundational links represent those links that your website simply should have. These are opportunities where a backlink would exist if all sites were known to all site owners.

Some examples of foundational links include:

Mentions – Websites that mention your brand in some way (brand name, product, employees, proprietary data, etc.) on their website but don’t link.
Partners – Websites that belong to real-world partners or companies you connect with offline and should also connect (link) with online.
Associations or groups – Websites for offline associations or groups you belong to where your site should be listed with a link.
Sponsorships – Any events or organizations your company sponsors might have websites that could (and should) link to your site.
Sites that link to competitors – If a website is linking to a competitor, there is a strong chance it would make sense for them to link to your site as well.

These link opportunities should set the foundation for your link acquisition efforts.

As the baseline for your link building strategy, you should start by exhausting these opportunities first to ensure you’re not missing highly relevant links to bolster your backlink profile.

Content Promotion

Next, consider content promotion as a strategy for building a healthy, diverse backlink profile.

Content promotion is much more proactive than the foundational link acquisition mentioned above. You must manifest the opportunity by creating link-worthy content rather than simply capitalizing on an existing opportunity.

Some examples of content promotion for links are:

Digital PR – Digital PR campaigns have numerous benefits and goals beyond link acquisition, but backlinks should be a primary KPI.
Original research – Similar to digital PR, original research should focus on providing valuable data to your audience. Still, you should also make sure any citations or references to your research are correctly linked.
Guest content – Whether regular columns or one-off contributions, providing guest content to websites is still a viable link acquisition strategy – when done right. The best way to gauge your guest content strategy is to ask yourself if you would still write the content for a site without guaranteeing a backlink, knowing you’ll still build authority and get your message in front of a new audience.
Original imagery – Along with research and data, if your company creates original imagery that offers unique value, you should promote those images and ask for citation links.

Content promotion is a viable avenue for building a healthy backlink profile as long as the content you’re promoting is worthy of links.

Community Involvement

Community involvement is the final piece of your link acquisition puzzle when building a diverse backlink profile.

After pursuing all foundational opportunities and manually promoting your content, you should ensure your brand is active and represented in all the spaces and communities where your audience engages.

In terms of backlinks, this could mean:

Wikipedia links – Wikipedia gets over 4 billion monthly visits, so backlinks here can bring significant referral traffic to your site. However, acquiring these links is difficult as these pages are moderated closely, and your site will only be linked if it is legitimately a top resource on the web.
Forums (Reddit, Quora, etc.) – Another great place to get backlinks that drive referral traffic is forums like Reddit and Quora. Again, these forums are strictly moderated, and earning link placements on these sites requires a page that delivers significant and unique value to a specific audience.
Social platforms – Social media platforms and groups represent communities where your brand should be active and engaged. While these strategies are likely handled by other teams outside SEO and focus on different metrics, you should still be intentional about converting these interactions into links when or where possible.
Offline events – While it may seem counterintuitive to think of offline events as a potential source for link acquisition, legitimate link opportunities exist here. After all, most businesses, brands, and people you interact with at these events also have websites, and networking can easily translate to online connections in the form of links.

While most of the link opportunities listed above will have the nofollow link attribute due to the nature of the sites associated with them, they are still valuable additions to your backlink profile as these are powerful, trusted domains.

These links help diversify your traffic sources by bringing substantial referral traffic, and that traffic is highly qualified as these communities share your audience.

How To Avoid Developing A Toxic Backlink Profile

Now that you’re familiar with the link building strategies that can help you cultivate a healthy, diverse backlink profile, let’s discuss what you should avoid.

As mentioned before, if you overoptimize one strategy or link, it can seem suspicious to search engines and cause your site to receive a penalty. So, how do you avoid filling your backlink profile with toxic links?

Remember The “Golden Rule” Of Link Building

One simple way to guide your link acquisition strategy and avoid running afoul of search engines like Google is to follow one “golden rule.”

That rule is to ask yourself: If search engines like Google didn’t exist, and the only way people could navigate the web was through backlinks, would you want your site to have a link on the prospective website?

Thinking this way strips away all the tactical, SEO-focused portions of the equation and only leaves the human elements of linking where two sites are linked because it makes sense and makes the web easier to navigate.

Avoid Private Blog Networks (PBNs)

Another good rule is to avoid looping your site into private blog networks (PBNs). Of course, it’s not always obvious or easy to spot a PBN.

However, there are some common traits or red flags you can look for, such as:

The person offering you a link placement mentions they have a list of domains they can share.
The prospective linking site has little to no traffic and doesn’t appear to have human engagement (blog comments, social media followers, blog views, etc.).
The website features thin content and little investment into user experience (UX) and design.
The website covers generic topics and categories, catering to any and all audiences.
Pages on the site feature numerous external links but only some internal links.
The prospective domain’s backlink profile features overoptimization in any of the previously discussed forms (high-density of exact match anchor text, abnormal ratio of nofollowed links, only one or two link types, etc.).

Again, diversification – in both tactics and strategies – is crucial to building a healthy backlink profile, but steering clear of obvious PBNs and remembering the ‘golden rule’ of link building will go a long way toward keeping your profile free from toxicity.

Evaluating Your Backlink Profile

As you work diligently to build and maintain a diverse, healthy backlink profile, you should also carve out time to evaluate it regularly from a more analytical perspective.

There are two main ways to evaluate the merit of your backlinks: leverage tools to analyze backlinks and compare your backlink profile to the greater competitive landscape.

Leverage Tools To Analyze Backlink Profile

There are a variety of third-party tools you can use to analyze your backlink profile.

These tools can provide helpful insights, such as the total number of backlinks and referring domains. You can use these tools to analyze your full profile, broken down by:

Followed vs. nofollowed.
Authority metrics (Domain Rating, Domain Authority, Authority Score, etc.).
Backlink types.
Location or country.
Anchor text.
Top-level domain types.
And more.

You can also use these tools to track new incoming backlinks, as well as lost backlinks, to help you better understand how your backlink profile is growing.

Some of the best tools for analyzing your backlink profile are:

Many of these tools also have features that estimate how toxic or suspicious your profile might look to search engines, which can help you detect potential issues early.

Compare Your Backlink Profile To The Competitive Landscape

Lastly, you should compare your overall backlink profile to those of your competitors and those competing with your site in the search results.

Again, the previously mentioned tools can help with this analysis – as far as providing you with the raw numbers – but the key areas you should compare are:

Total number of backlinks.
Total number of referring domains.
Breakdown of authority metrics of links (Domain Rating, Domain Authority, Authority Score, etc.).
Authority metrics of competing domains.
Link growth over the last two years.

Comparing your backlink profile to others within your competitive landscape will help you assess where your domain currently stands and provide insight into how far you must go if you’re lagging behind competitors.

It’s worth noting that it’s not as simple as whoever has the most backlinks will perform the best in search.

These numbers are typically solid indicators of how search engines gauge the authority of your competitors’ domains, and you’ll likely find a correlation between strong backlink profiles and strong search performance.

Approach Link Building With A User-First Mindset

The search landscape continues to evolve at a breakneck pace and we could see dramatic shifts in how people search within the next five years (or sooner).

However, at this time, search engines like Google still rely on backlinks as part of their ranking algorithms, and you need to cultivate a strong backlink profile to be visible in search.

Furthermore, if you follow the advice in this article as you build out your profile, you’ll acquire backlinks that benefit your site regardless of search algorithms, futureproofing your traffic sources.

Approach link acquisition like you would any other marketing endeavor – with a customer-first mindset – and over time, you’ll naturally build a healthy, diverse backlink profile.

More resources: 

Featured Image: Sammby/Shutterstock

Are you tired of pouring money into Google Ads campaigns with poor conversion rates?

You’re not alone.

Many businesses struggle to convert ad clicks into meaningful actions like purchases, sign-ups, or leads. But fear not, because in this article, we’re diving into real-life tips and tactics that can make a tangible difference to your conversion rates.

From refining your keyword selection to crafting compelling ad copies and optimizing your landing pages, we’ll explore practical, actionable tips that have proven to help improve Google Ads conversion rates.

Read on to understand how these strategies will help you turn your clicks into conversions.

1. Implement Proper Conversion Tracking

This first one seems like a no-brainer, but it’s often overlooked by many accounts.

The only way to understand whether your Google Ads campaigns are performing or not performing is to properly set up conversion tracking.

The most common ways Google Ads conversion tracking is implemented is through:

The other key component to proper conversion tracking is identifying what conversions make sense to track.

Oftentimes, brands have one big conversion in mind. For ecommerce, that is likely a purchase or a sale. For B2B companies, it’s likely a lead or a demo signup.

But what about all the other available touchpoints before a customer makes that leap?

Consider tracking “micro” conversions on your sites to really identify the positive impact your PPC campaigns have.

Examples of “micro” conversions to track include:

Email newsletter signups.
Free samples.
Whitepaper download.
Webinar signup.
And more.

Taking a step back from the ins and outs of the platforms helps you hone in through the lens of a consumer. Setting up accurate measurements from the purchase journey can make a big impact on how you structure and optimize your Google Ads campaigns.

2. Optimize Keyword Lists

The second way to help increase Google Ads conversion rates is continuous optimization of keyword lists.

The Google Ads search terms report is a perfect tool for this. Not only can you see what users are searching for, in their own words, that leads to conversions, but you can see what is not converting.

We’ll get to negative keywords later.

Keep in mind which match types you’re using throughout the keyword optimization process.

Broad match keywords have the biggest leniency when it comes to what types of searches will show for your ad. It also has the largest reach because of its flexible nature.

Turning some of your top-performing Broad match keywords into Exact match can help increase those Quality Scores, which can lead to lower cost per click (CPCs) and better efficiency for your campaigns.

3. Match Ad Copy To Landing Pages

Alright, so you’ve gotten a user to click on your ad. Great!

But you’re finding that not a lot of people are actually purchasing. What gives?

Surely, it must be a problem with the PPC campaigns.

Not always.

Typically, one of the most common reasons users leave a website right after clicking on an ad has to do with a mismatch of expectations.

Simply put, what the user was promised in an ad was not present or prominent on the landing page.

A great way to optimize conversion rates is to ensure the landing page copy is tailored to match your PPC ad copy.

Doing this ensures a relatively seamless user experience, which can help speed up the purchase process.

4. Use Clear Call-To-Actions

If a user isn’t performing the actions you’d expect to after clicking on an ad, it may be time to review your ad copy.

Since the emergence of responsive search ads (RSAs), I’ve seen many redundant headlines and generic call-to-actions (CTAs).

No wonder a user doesn’t know what you want them to do!

When creating CTAs either in ad copy or on the landing page, keep these principles in mind:

Use action-oriented language that clearly communicates what you want them to do.
For landing pages, make sure the CTA button is visually distinct and easily clickable. It helps if a CTA is shown before a user has to scroll down to find it.
Test different CTAs to determine what resonates best with users.

Examples of action-oriented CTA language could sound like:

“Download Now”
“Request A Quote”
“Shop Now”

Try steering away from generic language such as “Learn More” unless you’re truly running a more top-of-funnel (TOF) campaign.

5. Optimize For Mobile

With mobile phones so prevalent in our society, it’s shocking how many websites are still not optimizing their mobile experience!

Creating a landing page with desktop top-of-mind should really be revisited, given that mobile traffic has overtaken desktop.

So, what can you do to help increase your conversion rates on mobile?

Use a responsive web design to accommodate different mobile layouts.
Make sure the site speed has fast loading times.
Create any mobile-specific features like CTA placement to make sure it’s easily viewable for users.
Optimize form fills on mobile devices.

6. Experiment With Ad Copy Testing

Ad copy is one of the biggest levers you can control in your PPC campaigns.

Even slight changes or tweaks to a headline or description can have a big impact on CTR and conversion rates.

Having multiple ad copy variants is crucial when trying to understand what resonates most with users.

Part of the beauty of Google’s Responsive Search ads is the number of headline inputs you can have at once. Google’s algorithm then determines the best-performing ad copy combinations to increase conversion rates.

Google Ads also has tools built into the platform for more controlled testing if that is a route you want to take.

You can create ad variants or create an experiment directly in Google Ads for more precise A/B testing.

It’s also important to test one element at a time to isolate the impact of each change. Testing too many elements at once can muddy up analysis.

7. Utilize Ad Assets

Ad assets are a great way to help influence a click to your website, which can help improve conversion rates.

Assets like callouts, structured snippets, and sitelinks can provide additional detail that couldn’t be shown in headlines or descriptions.

When your Ad Rank is higher, you have a better likelihood of showing ad assets, which helps increase the overall visibility of your ad.

Your ad assets can be customized to fit your campaign goals, and can even show specific promotions, special product features, and social proof like seller ratings.

8. Don’t Be Shy With Negative Keywords

A sound negative keyword strategy is one of the best ways to improve Google Ads conversion rates.

You may be wasting your paid search budget on keywords that aren’t producing conversions.

You may also notice that some broad keywords have gone rogue and are triggering your ads for terms they definitely shouldn’t be showing up for!

As mentioned earlier, the search terms report can help mitigate a lot of these types of keywords.

You can choose to add negative keywords at the following levels:

Ad group.
Campaign.
Negative keyword lists to apply to campaigns.

You also have the ability to add negative keywords as Broad, Phrase, or Exact match.

Alleviating poor-performing keywords allows your budget to optimize for your core keyword sets that lead to conversions.

9. Set Proper Bid Strategies

The type of bid strategy you choose for your Google Ads campaigns can make or break performance.

In recent years, Google has moved towards its fully automated bidding strategies, using machine learning to align performance with the chosen goal and bid strategy.

Currently, Google has five Smart Bidding strategies focused on conversion-based goals:

Target CPA (Cost-Per-Action): Helps increase conversions while targeting a specific CPA.
Target ROAS (Return on Ad Spend): Helps increase conversions while targeting a specific ROAS.
Maximize Conversions: Optimizes for conversions, not focused on a target ROAS outcome, and spends the entire budget.
Maximize Conversion Value: Optimizes for conversion value, not focused on a target ROAS outcome, and spends the entire budget.
Enhanced CPC: A way to automatically adjust your manual bids to try to maximize conversions.

Choosing the right bidding strategy is just one piece of the puzzle.

The inputs of the chosen bid strategy are just as important, where more context is needed to have a successful campaign.

For example, suppose you choose a Target CPA bid strategy for a search campaign and set the target CPA to $50.

However, in that campaign, you notice that your average CPC ranges anywhere from $10-$20.

Suddenly, your impressions go down, and you’re not sure what’s happening!

It could be your bid strategy inputs.

In the example above, if you have high CPCs but set your target CPA to just slightly higher than the CPCs, that means you need to have a stellar conversion rate in order to stay within that $50 CPA threshold.

Additionally, many make the mistake of setting the same target CPA for all campaigns, regardless of Brand or Non-Brand intent.

Most often, Non-Brand keywords will have much higher CPAs than Brand terms, so the inputs should be set accordingly based on performance.

Make sure you set your Target CPA thresholds high enough initially for the campaigns to gather information to meet expectations.

10. Add Audience Segmentation

As keyword match types tend to get looser, there is more emphasis on leveraging audience segmentation to reach the right people.

Using audience segments allows you to tailor your ads towards specific groups or utilize audiences as exclusions so your ads aren’t triggered.

Examples of audience segments within Google Ads include:

Demographics: Can be based on gender, age, household income, education, and other areas.
Interests and behaviors: Based on hobbies, lifestyle choices, website browsing behavior, and purchase history.
Actively researching or planning: Based on a user’s past or recent purchase intent.
Past interactions with your business: Can be based off previous engagements like website visits, add-to-cart, other online interactions, existing customer relationship management (CRM) data, and more.

By segmenting audiences within your PPC campaigns, you can customize ad messaging based on those segments.

This can lead to maximizing relevance and engagement, ultimately increasing conversion rates.

You can also use insights from GA4 to inform your segmentation strategy to identify high-value audience segments.

11. Create A Retargeting Strategy

On average, average e-commerce conversion rates range from 2.5 – 3%.

That means 97% of people leave a website without purchasing. Talk about a missed opportunity!

With a retargeting strategy in place, you have the opportunity to win back those missed customers and turn them into your brand champions.

Retargeting keeps track of website or app visitors who don’t take the desired action you’d like them to. You can create retargeting lists as niche or as broad as you prefer, but keep in mind that audiences must be a certain size before they’re eligible to use.

Examples of utilizing retargeting could be:

Creating segmented lists of users based on certain category pages of a website.
Users who have added an item to their cart but didn’t purchase it.
Users who have viewed at least three to five pages.

These segments can be used to create retargeting campaigns, which show those users ads to help increase the likelihood of them converting. Be sure to set those ad frequencies within the campaign so you don’t annoy your audience, though!

12. Offer Incentives

These days, shoppers are more accustomed to expecting a discount whenever they purchase.

There’s certainly an argument that programming people to buy only during a sale can diminish a product’s value perception.

However, there are strategies that can boost sales and conversion rates without devaluing the product.

If possible, try making the offers more personal towards the user and their behavior.

Additionally, you can set smaller windows of sale times and incorporate real-time purchase behavior so users can see how many people have taken advantage of the sale.

13. Choose The Right Location Settings

One of the easiest ways to waste precious PPC dollars is to set up location targeting wrong.

Google Ads offers multiple ways to geo-target locations within the campaign settings to help reach your goals.

Location targeting allows you to set specific locations for your ads to show, including:

City.
Region.
State.
Country.
Radius.

For example, if you have products that can only be purchased in the United States, you would likely target “United States” within the campaign setting.

Nowadays, it’s not as easy as just choosing “United States” (in this example). This is where advanced settings come in.

Within the Google campaign settings, you have two location-targeting options:

Presence or interest: People in, regularly in, or who’ve shown interest in your targeted location.
Presence: People in or regularly in your targeted locations.

In the example above, it would make sense to choose “Presence” – otherwise, the campaign could show ads in areas where the products aren’t available.

If users in those countries click on the ad but see they can’t purchase when they get to the website, that is a recipe for poor conversion rates.

14. Use Social Proof To Build Trust

Brands can leverage social proof in their Google Ads campaigns to help boost conversion rates.

The goal of using social proof is to incorporate elements that demonstrate positive sentiment from customers, endorsements, or validation that the customer’s needs will be met.

There are many ways brands can add social proof to their campaigns:

Seller ratings ad asset.
Callout ad assets.
Adding customer reviews and testimonials to the landing page.
Share case studies and success stories on the landing page.

Additionally, strategies like creating limited-time offers with an emphasis on social proof can help boost sales and conversion rates.

This could mean showing in real-time how many customers have taken advantage of the offer, which creates urgency for the customer to act.

Focusing on social proof and validation can build trust, credibility, and confidence among potential customers – ultimately leading to higher conversion rates.

15. Schedule Your Ads Based on Performance

Ad scheduling is an underestimated tool in Google Ads that helps improve conversion rates.

The beauty of ad scheduling is that you can control when your ad will or will not show.

Make sure to have ample budget and schedule ads when potential customers are most actively searching and are more engaged.

This can lead to higher effectiveness of the campaign and increased conversion rates.

For example, if you run a B2B software company, it’s highly unlikely that potential customers are searching in the middle of the night.

Optimize your spend by not showing ads at certain times of the day (such as the middle of the night) or days of the week (like weekends).

If you’re not sure how to start optimizing campaigns by time, consider the following:

Use tools like GA4 to understand when most purchases are happening on the website.
Look for trends like website traffic, conversion times, engagement rates, etc., by time.
Align your ad schedule with peak business operations times, especially if customer service is involved.
Adjust ad schedules around key events like holidays or peak seasonality.

In Summary

There’s no magic bullet in Google Ads that will guarantee high conversion rates.

There are many variables that can add up to the overall performance of a campaign.

Small tweaks and optimizations like the 15 examples above can go a long way in increasing your Google Ads conversion rates.

From refining keyword selections and testing ad copy to improving your landing pages for optimal user experience, these strategies can help maximize the effectiveness of your PPC efforts.

More resources: 

Featured Image: The KonG/Shutterstock

Google’s recent leak highlighted engagement as part of the ranking system, alluding to the importance of influencing audience behavior to drive SEO-specific metrics, like ranking or organic visibility.

That said, I’ve been using simple variations of these measures for a while to evaluate the impact of integrated PR and SEO campaigns. I don’t think the idea of measuring search behavior is new, but the Google leaks shed some light on its importance.

For sustainable growth in organic visibility and rankings, SEO strategies need to pivot to include measures that reflect how strongly owned assets, marketing assets, and messaging influence an audience’s search behavior.

Google’s broader objective to rank content that is genuinely helpful to specific audience segments is an important context for considering this shift.

So, SEO pros should evaluate website performance based on engagement-driven metrics like asset NPS, idea adoption rate, and time to activation, which will be important for directly and indirectly maximizing organic search visibility.

Why Measure Influence

The recent Google leaks highlight the growing importance of audience engagement measures in ranking pages.

This highlights the importance of integrating SEO, content creation, and PR, where influencing audience behavior becomes a key measure.

I see it like this:

Google emphasizes engagement: The Google leaks suggest that Google places a lot of weight on user engagement measures such as click data, repeat visitors, site traffic, or related click data. Despite being incomplete and likely outdated information, it is one of many examples of Google using user engagement in some way.
AI integration into the algorithm: With AI being integrated more heavily into Google’s ranking systems, AI could interpret and use this user engagement data to influence ranking.
Brand search: Site traffic from brand search is an indicator of audience engagement and can influence organic visibility.

But to drive audience engagement, we have to think beyond simple SEO activities like link building, creating keyword-focused content, or technical SEO.

The future of search marketing is designing scenarios that influence an audience’s search behavior.

Ideal Search Behavior Scenario

The audience’s journey is more complex today than ever because they use many different sources to learn about their problems, the solutions, and the opportunities they create. However, this scenario simplifies how to think about your search strategy.

Scenario: You create an asset, you get PR coverage, and the audience searches the asset in Google (maybe they don’t find it based on keywords, then search your brand name). Then, they keep returning to your site for new assets or resources to solve their problems or create an opportunity (the original one as a resource or for your offering).

Simple Search Behavior Scenario Statement:

I need to create a content asset about [a problem or opportunity], to get coverage about [an asset of the asset] that the audience will prompt because [audience interest], which will drive my audience to search for [category or terms you own], and they will immediately or return to the site to take action because [solve a problem or create an opportunity].

You’ll have to modify this based on your specific website event goals, but the statement’s essence will guide you in the right direction.

This direction will allow you to focus on the much more significant but more difficult-to-impact measures below.

I have a foundation in product management and marketing, so I adopted these measures from product marketing concepts since they directly relate to audience actions.

Measure 1: Asset NPS

How likely is your audience to promote your content assets or ideas?

NPS score is used to gauge an audience’s loyalty and satisfaction using a survey question: “How likely are you to recommend our content to a friend or colleague?”

Respondents can provide a rating from 0-10.

Promoters (9-10): Loyal and enthusiastic audience who keep talking about and referring your content or ideas to others.
Passives (7-8): Satisfied with content but not an overly enthusiastic audience who will listen to a competitor’s point of view.
Detractors (0-6): Unhappy audience that speaks negatively about your content.

High NPS indicates strong audience engagement, boosting engagement, and can indirectly influence organic visibility.

Typically, you’d have to survey an audience to gather the data. Use Google Forms, Survey Monkey, or any survey tool with a rating scale to collect questions.

Pro tip: Survey the audience on your site, the following you have on social media, or the email list you’re building as a result of the audience submitting contact info on the site or even through a newsletter.

Measure 2: Idea Adoption Rate

Does your audience adopt your ideas?

The adoption rate of an idea refers to the percentage of the audience segment that starts using the idea after you launch the asset.

This is a key measure to understand if your audience is accepting a particular idea, providing insights into engagement and market fit. This could directly influence engagement signals that can influence ranking.

Here’s How To Calculate
Metrics

Audience segment size: How many people are in your audience segment?
Audience usage size: Number of people who use the ideas in your content.

Formula: Adoption rate = (audience usage size/audience segment size) X 100%

You can collect this data in a lot of different ways, but shares alone are not a great metric since I don’t believe they reflect actual influence.

Find discussions or actions taken as a result of your ideas or content.

Is your audience discussing your ideas on LinkedIn, Twitter (X), or relevant social?
Are newsletters talking about your ideas or the essence of your ideas?
Are your process steps being discussed?
Do people share videos using your product or ideas?

Pro tip: I see some creators concerned about people “stealing” their original idea. I don’t think this is a bad thing. This is a signal of adoption due to the idea of solving a significant problem or opportunity.

Measure 3: Time To Activation

How long does it take your audience to take action on your site?

Time to activation measures how long it takes for your audience to take action by searching a topic or taking action on your site after engaging with your messaging.

These can include brand searches, search keywords you own, document downloads, contacting for a quote, or requesting a demo.

This measure can show how well your content is being adopted or if the messaging aligns with your audience’s journey. Shorter activation times suggest strong alignment with audience needs and higher content efficacy.

How To Measure

Identify an activation point (e.g., events you want the audience to trigger) or goals on the site.
Estimate how many people read or engaged with your content.
Measure how many people took action around specific events on the site.

Pro tip: Some marketers will say you shouldn’t measure your program because attribution modeling doesn’t work or SEO takes time. However, time to activation highlights the importance of evaluating the actions on the site that the campaign should drive. Design campaigns for time to activation of less than 3 months for each event, 6 months for large goals, and 12 months for larger business impacts like creating a new market category.

As you activate your audience, brand search will likely have an impact, as your audience will likely search Google for more information on your topic.

Measure 4: Brand Search Volume

Does the audience search for your brand in search engines?

Brand measures refer to the number of times users search for a specific term you branded or own in search engines.

You can measure this in Google Search Console, searching for your brand name or a term you own.

Pro tip: Brand keywords are reported in Google Analytics under the general search engine (e.g. Google) with non-brand keywords. Look for short-term spikes or sustainable trends in Google Search Console, segmenting it in any way possible (e.g. page, query, date, brand modified term) to find the impact. Design your strategy with the idea of being able to measure brand search impact.

Impact On Your Strategy

Integrating SEO and PR strategies to influence audience behavior and engagement is important for maximizing organic visibility and search rankings.

Google’s recent leaks emphasize the importance of audience engagement, highlighting the need to integrate content creation, SEO, and PR to drive meaningful interactions.

Measures such as asset NPS, idea adoption rate, and time to activation provide valuable insights into audience loyalty, idea adoption, and action times.

These seem to be important for driving engagement and influencing search engine rankings but critical for audience engagement.

These engagement-driven measures will help ensure you don’t have to keep chasing Google’s evolving algorithms and that content genuinely resonates with your audience segment.

Start designing integrated PR and SEO strategies.

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