At Pubcon 2015 in Las Vegas, the SEJ team had the opportunity to speak with Jim Banks of Cheapflights, and Jordan Koene of Searchmetrics, who each had unique views on how to keep searchers satisfied.
Jim speaks from his experience capturing searchers with programmatic PPC bidding, while Jordan explains what visitor expectations are for a mobile experience in 2015.
Learn more in the videos below:
Here are some key takeaways from the video:
Jim Banks of CheapFlights on Programmatic PPC Bidding
- Though a PPC devotee, Jim says one of his ultimate goals is to rely less on Google and focus more on brand building
- Jim is a proponent of dynamic search ads when it comes to both brand building and driving results. Rather than having to design your own ads, Google’s dynamic search ads are generated automatically with the help of HTML 5, using information pulled right from your site. Jim explains that this gives you more time to focus on what really matters: optimizing campaigns.
- When serving display ads it’s important to focus on ancillary needs. Understand not just who is clicking on your ads, but why they’re clicking. When you know their intent you can satisfy multiple needs.
- Jim gives an example from his experience in the travel industry. If it’s found that the primary audience clicking on ads is women in their 30s, try to narrow down why they’re clicking. If their business travellers, you you can tailor your ads to appeal to the needs of a woman traveling on business.
- PPC campaigns on Facebook have been mildly successful, Jim explains, but search is still number one. However, Facebook is a great avenue for running ads to drive app installs.
- Jim speaks on the challenges of running PPC campaigns across multiple countries. In North America there’s a mobile and desktop market, but in most emerging countries it’s mobile only. The economies of some countries don’t support desktop computing, so people can only access the web from their mobile device.
Jordan Koene of Searchmetrics on Going Mobile-Friendly
- Mobile has been important to search rankings long before “Mobilegeddon” rolled out, Jordan says, adding that the algorithm update didn’t create as significant a shakeup as was expected. Those who were prepared for mobile were already ranking well in mobile searches, and vice versa. There were not a whole lot of ranking shifts.
- The best mobile-friendly websites focus on three things: design, speed, function. Jordan emphasizes that speed is a tremendously important ranking factor on mobile.
- Even if you have a mobile-friendly site right now, Jordan says you should still audit your mobile experience on a regular basis. Revisit it every month or so to remind yourself how other users are experiencing your site. That way you’ll be able to see if it needs changing.
- What’s better — a responsive website, or a separate site designed just for mobile? There’s still no industry standard, Jordan says, and in the end the only thing that matters is that you’re delivering the best experience to users.
- When it comes to pushing a mobile app on a mobile site, there’s a right and wrong way to go about it. Google doesn’t like intrusive app install ads, and if you look at the data you’ll find that users don’t respond to them either.
- What about a mobile-friendly site or your own app? That’s difficult to say, Jordan says, but worth considering internally. Some companies are more suited for apps than others
- However you present your mobile experience to users, Jordan says the best strategy is to focus on getting visitors to accomplish one or two main things. Keep it simple and you’ll see greater success on mobile.
Please visit SEJ’s YouTube page for more video interviews.
Featured image a screenshot of video taken Nov 2015 by author
Category
Mobile SEO
