To take a look, please go to welcombreak.com

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Google Advertising Fundamental Exam :

•    In “Impression” & “Reach, what is Reach?

•    If you want to reduce your avg. CPC then what should be the action plan?
•    Anny creates a Google AdWords ad for her company. She wants to avoid showing her ad when users search for free, cheap, or crack. How can she do this with a keyword match type?

•    Which tool allows you to specify certain hours or days of the week when you want your AdWords ads to appear?

•    Are demographic options available for campaigns that are only running on the Search network?

•    Is Display Network targeting required to run a mobile image ad?

•    What is the benefit of using Display ad builder?

•    Using phrases like “hurry!,” “limited time,” and “special offer” would impact the CTR?

•    Should we use standard banner ads as the opening image for video ad?

•    What should be your action plan if you find that interaction rates are declining for your video ad?

Search Advertising Advanced Exam:

•    Does the quality score of your Display network affect the quality score of search network?

•    What would be the appropriate account access level to assign a co-worker who also needs to log onto the AdWords account to make changes and manage access levels?

•    Jenifer’s immediate goal is to increase clickthrough rate what can be the most appropriate optimization strategies?

•    John is reviewing her Google AdWords account and notices that his ad has received a considerable amount of clicks. Upon further review, John realizes that on some days the amounts of clicks were considerably more than what his daily budget has allowed. What is the most likely reason of why this is happening?

•    Consider an advertiser that is trying to sell more designer dresses. The advertiser has identified keywords for the ad groups: designer dress, branded designer dresses, and designer shoes. Which keyword wouldn’t be a good choice to include in the ad group designer dress?

•    How would an advertiser determine most profitable keywords within a campaign?

•    MCC user wants to link a new client account into MCC, what will be the first step in order to start the process?

•    An API user of a given AdWords account is not able to view that account thru AdWords interface, the likely reason could be?

•    What is the benefit of using AdWords editor?

Display Advertising Advanced Exam:

•    What is a benefit an advertiser gets only if they have separate campaigns for the search and the display network?

•    When using keyword targeting on the display network, an ad’s position is dictated by the maximum CPC of the ad group and…………..?

•    Which of the following bidding options is best suited to an advertiser focusing on branding?

•    One benefit of placement targeting on the Google display network is?

•    An advertiser is not interested in branding, but primarily in getting cost effective conversions from a display campaign. The advertiser should use….?

•    Which of these techniques you can use to ensure that your display ads do not appear on less relevant sites?

•    Which of the following is only available for ads created using display ad builder?

•    What is a possible reason why a maximum CPA set by the advertiser be exceeded?

Reporting & Analysis Advance Exam:

•    Your customer wants you to create a Google AdWords report that will show them how many times the ads were shown and the actual cost-per-click rate. What type of report can you create for the client?

•    An advertiser enabled conversion optimizer & notices decrease in number of conversions, what can be the possible reason?

•    Up to _____ different conversion tracking types can be set up, with different monetary values assigned to each one?

•    Which report in analytics helps advertiser to identify which pages should be optimized?

•    Which AdWords tool allow user to view statics on keywords in account like cost & CTR?

•    Which adwords feature is compatible with conversion optimizer?

•    A visitor clicks on an AdWords ad and purchases a gadget. The next day they return by typing the website address into their browser address bar, and then make another purchase (this time a different gadget). How are the conversions measured in AdWords?

I hope you find going through these questions helpful.

The post Adwords certification exams – how to max it? (part 2) appeared first on Digital musings.

Here are some tips & sample questions for all the various exams:

1) Adword Learning Center: The best way to prepare for the exams is by reading all the material available in the Adword Learning Center. Here you’ll find comprehensive training lessons, which cover everything about the AdWords program.

2) AdWords Video: Watch all the Google AdWords videos available online. There are a few topics which are not covered in the readings but are covered in the videos. You might miss a few important things if you skip the videos.

3) AdWords Interface: Familiarize yourself with the interface as much as possible; the best way to learn about an online product is by using it.

4) Important Topics: There were some really tough questions related to Billing, Best practices for Ad, Payment, Account access level MCC, MCC account hierarchy & AdWords API in the last few examsso read this topic carefully.

5) Time Management: There are about 100+ questions which are to be solved in 120 minutes. You will nearly run out of time. So, if you don’t know the answer to a question right away, you can mark it and review all the marked questions anytime later.

6) Never leave a question blank: There is no negative marking & it is better to guess than to leave an answer blank. You have the “Mark Question [M]” option in the testing center browser. This lets you choose an answer that you think may be correct, and then move on. When you have answered all the questions, you are given an option to review your marked questions.

7) Online support: You can visit websites like iPassexam and ucertify to take a free mock test or you can subscribe for the sample questions.

Following are few useful link to study for Adwords Certification Exam. All the best!

1. http://support.google.com/adwords/certification/bin/static.py?hl=en-GB&page=examstudy.cs&rd=1
2. http://www.ipassexam.com/
3. http://googleadwordsmockexam.com/category/sample-questions/
4. http://googlecertifications.com/?p=1

The post Adwords certifications – how to max it? (part 1) appeared first on Digital musings.

This is not new. Google is continuously updating its algorithms to provide its users relevant search results and to improve the user experience. They test over 500 changes on search results every year. Not all of them make newspaper headlines, but the ones which do have a breathtaking impact.

It has launched two updates in the recent times to cut down on spam, to eliminate poor websites from the first page and to penalize the duplicate content. These updates are known as Google Panda and Google Penguin.

Panda checks the low quality and duplicate content, advert to content ratio on the websites whereas Penguin pushes down the websites for keyword stuffing and poor inbound links. With the regular updated versions of these tools, one needs to know how to avoid a fall in the search ranking.

With the following tools, one can check which update has hit the website:

Google Analytics

With the Google Organic reporting, one can analyze the web traffic  on a daily basis during the various algorithm updates.

In the graphs below, the first site was hit by Panda twice and the second one was hit by Penguin once.

Traffic drop due to Penguin (note that the dates are in mm-dd format)

Drop in traffic due to Penguin

This report can help in determining the keywords that dropped once one knows which algorithm update has hit the site. Knowing the dates of these Google updates can help explain changes in rankings and organic website traffic.

Google Webmaster Tool

1) Search Query Data

Under the “Search Queries” tab, the impressions and clicks for queries that return the web pages in the search results are shown. This is a great way to see the impact of a certain algorithm update.

2) Focus on the Problem – Filter by Web

“Filters” button in the upper left-hand corner of the Search Queries report lets you filter the results and shows the keywords that dropped from the search results.

Corrective actions for Google Panda and Penguin

There are enough and more articles on the net for specific steps for websites who have had a sudden drop in ranks. I will just outline the major activities.

1. Stop any and all spammy SEO activities in content creation and link population
2. Review all pages (including the SEo pages) from a customer benefit perspective. If a page does not really help the customer, it should go
3. Increase the quality of all content generated and all links earned and shared
4. Resubmit to Google, and
5. Hope for the best

The post Is that drop in website traffic a Panda (or a Penguin)-shaped bite by Google? appeared first on Digital musings.

I have been around in digital marketing for around 10 years and have worked both on the client side (first few years) and then on the agency side. I have seen a lot of different approaches by clients for evaluating digital agencies. Based on this experience, I have my own two bits to offer on how to evaluate an agency.

Understands your business model and operating environment

The digital agency should have done its homework about you. It should understand how your business makes money and what are the challenges it is facing. Understanding the basics helps them get the details right during a campaign. It should understand as well as you what the ROI metrics are going to be and how to capture them. For example, the ROI for a campaign might be based on increased awareness for a particular product. The metric could be CPM or ‘influenced revenue’.  Similarly, for an SEO campaign, the agency should be prepared to report not only ranks, but SEO generated revenue and traffic for an ROI measure. What is important is that the metric is definite, understood and accepted as a measure of performance.

Online marketing experience and knowledge

While this field is all of ten years old, there has been a lot of change here. However, common sense rules work here as well as it does in other channels. For example, a campaign should ideally make more money than it costs. What I am trying to say is that experience counts. So does variety. Today, there are numerous social media agencies which have great ideas and insights into the Facebook customer. However, an online campaign is all about making different platforms work with each other for the business. The agency has to have multi-discipline prowess across online marketing.

Work ethic and culture

An open and collaborative approach is best for problem-solving – which is the main skill required during campaign execution. Transparency also implies that costs are shared and that there are no surprises or hidden kickbacks.  Every little project will have its unique set of problems. Having an agency which is open and transparent will help.

Agency contracts and pricing

The lock-in and notice period for an agency contract should be proportional to the ongoing investment it is making. It should be upfront about the deliverables and the breakup of the final price. Agencies which seem too eager might have their reasons for being so. Dig deeper.

I would love to hear your thoughts and experiences with agency selection.

The post How to select a digital agency? appeared first on Digital musings.

This strategy has to be long term and not gimmicky. Gone are the days when search engines were gullible. Today’s’ search engine is a highly intelligent software with vindictive behavior. Any attempt to manipulate ranks, if identified, can lead to severe penalties.

While working with our clients, our main aim was to get a better ranks for high volume keywords. This implies thorough keyword research and careful planning to try and capture high ranks on these keywords.

See how large the difference is between broad and exact match volumes. This implies that there needs to be a viable long tail keyword strategyThere are important things to note in this performance chart.

1. There was a site change in March which included several SEO friendly improvements. This has helped gain ranks in an extremely competitive space.

The post Make yourself E-Visible through SEO appeared first on Digital musings.

The brands are witnessing customers buying products on the basis of reviews posted on Facebook, twitter or by clicking on the product links posted on these websites. The sentiment towards a brand is getting changed by how a brand handles its social media presence, thus making it a major buying influencer.

The marketers have started focusing on the use of this platform but one question which they need to answer is how should they calculate the ROI for social media.

Calculating ROI is based on a simple calculation of:

Benefits- Cost*100

Cost

The benefits is the revenue generated and the cost is the money invested but in the case of social media the benefits has two parts: tangible and intangible.

Tangible:

-          Different types of impressions and the value of those types of impressions

-          Clicks to the website

-          Increase in attributable sales from the website

-          Leads generated from the channel

To attach value to each, you need to try and find equivalents in your existing media plan. Please see some examples below.

Some of the intangible benefits could be:

Intangible:

-          Share of voice i.e. the likes, user engagement, people talking about, retweets etc.

-          Conversations i.e. the content (FB wall posts, tweets, blog posts), comments, interactions, pins etc.

-          Advocates i.e.  Fans, followers, pinners etc.

-          Customer Care i.e. handling customer complaints, answering product queries, solving customer issues etc.

The cost for social media includes three parts:

-          Content generation

-          Technology

-          Ads and promotion of the social media channel

As you cater for more and more metrics as tangibles, you will realize that the list of intangibles comes smaller. For example, the number of followers on twitter has a value. Some of that value is captured when we measure re-tweets.

By separating out and attaching value to the tangibles to the extent possible, the ROI formula now looks like -

[Value (likes, comments, shares, people talking about)] – Cost    *100 + Intangibles.

Cost

At this point, you could decide at the level of ROI you are comfortable with for the tangibles. For example, even at a tangible ROI of -20%, you might allow this activity to continue as you believe that the intangibles actually take the ROI into the positive domain.

Did you find this post helpful? Please do let me know.

The post How to calculate social media ROI appeared first on Digital musings.

In a span of less than 3 years from its launch in March 2010, it has beaten Yahoo in terms of organic traffic driver and has grown more than 4000% last year. According to the reports by comScore, Pinterest buyers spend more and make more transactions as compared to any other social media buyer. With around 17 million total visits per week, Pinterest has become a valuable marketing tool toleverage the online brand presence and value.

Businesses have started using this platform to increase the web traffic and to create high brand awareness with the use of more compelling content. While Facebook allows to post photos, videos and text on the business pages where visitors can comment and interact, Pinterest has a rather unique approach to create brand awareness. The site allows individuals to interact, share and discover new interests, and products by pinning images or videos to their own or other’s pinboards.

Businesses want visitors. Pinning is definitely one of the ways of attracting them. The images which are pinned on the boards; have back links to the source and every time the image gets pinned, a new link is generated.

With each repin, the visibility is expanded and helps in lead generation as it increases the number of people who see the board. So the businesses need to be very innovative towards their approach on using the pins and making the pin boards to get the best of this tool.

Before plunging in, do weigh on the following thoughts –

1. Pinterest’s main audience in still in the US and Western Europe. Check to see how your target customer is liking pinterest.
2. Pinterest is a visual format – Does that suit your product or service?

Happy Pinning!

The post Does your business need Pinterest? appeared first on Digital musings.

Google Panda and Penguin updates have had a widespread impact on ranks, with several websites dropping in ranks. These updates have had multiple algorithm changes being pushed out – each impacting different search engine ranking parameters and different markets. Customers use a search engine to search for products and Google is the largest search engine in several markets – because of this, many businesses have had a significant revenue impact. The verdict about these updates is mixed. There is definitely an improvement in overall search quality – spammy sites have been punished, over-optimized sites which were focusing on search engine bots and not on customer experience have also been hit. However, there are quite a few examples on the internet where sites which were following all that Google was trying promote with Panda and Penguin have also been penalized.

The main aim of these updates is to check the overly-optimized and user unfriendly websites, and to force them down the search results.

Google Panda seeks out low quality websites, both in content and structure whereas Google Penguin seeks out the spam websites. The Panda update ensures the relevance of the content and a site’s ability to indicate that it appears high in the search results whereas the Penguin updates make sure that the website structure is user friendly.

Envigo’s clients have been largely unaffected by these updates. In fact, we have seen a lot of success in ranks when Google has penalized some of the competition due to Panda and Penguin. Envigo’s has a two fold strategy – a reactive and a proactive approach. The reactive approach has been to gather information about any algorithm update from published sources and interviews of people like Matt Cutts (from the Google search quality team) . The SEO team then reviews the potential impact on various websites and comes up with a set of changes to the SEO process. These changes are pressed into action to minimize any impending loss in ranks. The proactive approach is to follow an overall SEO philosophy which is closely aligned with a search engine. What every search engine wants is to provide quality content to its users for relevant search results. The proactive approach is to help search engines with their goal by improving a client site and a client’s content from an end-users (not a search engine robot’s) perspective.

Our SEO strategies have worked out well so far. Fingers crossed.

The post The SEO zoo – how to avoid pandas and penguins? appeared first on Digital musings.

“Day by day, the number of devices, platforms, and browsers that need to work with your site grows.
Responsive web design represents a fundamental shift in how we’ll build websites for the decade to
come.”
- Jeffrey Veen (Author of The art and science of Web Design)

This technique works according to the user behavior and adjusts the design according to screen size,
platform and orientation. As the user shifts from one device to another, the website automatically
adjusts itself according to the resolution, image size and platform. A responsive website design starts
with the integration CSS3, media queries, the @media rule, fluid grids and flexible images, all of which
lets the website to adapt its layout to the viewing device, user agent, and environment.

Recently, Envigo started working for Cigna TTK Health Insurance, a new entrant in the Indian
market.Their website was developed using the responsive web design technique. Now the users visiting
their website through any device will be viewing the same content across all the platforms.

This technique helped our client in saving the time and money to be invested in creating multiple
websites for the same destination.

Having same page URLS to deliver content to all the users also lessened the worries ofincompatibilities
between different versions of the content. When promoting a link, the company can now be certain that
people can access the website directly irrespective of their location and the device that is being used.
While creating their website through responsive web design, we also made sure that the content that
the company wanted to promote is available, be it on mobile or any other device.

The post Responsive Web Design- How to design for multiple devices? appeared first on Digital musings.