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Knowledge Tiles: Use Quick Answer to Jump to Page…

June 3, 2018

It may be difficult for a brand new company or organization to make it to Page 1 of Google results quickly for generic, high-volume search terms. The best thing to do to get there is to write quality content, network your website for high quality backlinks, and wait. However, there is one method that may get you to the top of Page 1, even before organic results, without spending months building authority or spending money or grant dollars on AdWords advertisements. This is known as Quick Answer Knowledge Tiles.

What is a Quick Answer Knowledge Tile?

You might have seen these before without really knowing what they are. It is when Google attempts to answer the users query directly within the search results page, without requiring a click-through to view the content natively. This is probably due to the rise in voice-activated digital assistants. They pull answers to your questions from Google results, when providing you a link would be worthless. Here’s an example below for the query, “How do I write off a charitable donation?”

While authoritative content correlates more often to knowledge tiles, consideration does not require a rank of #1 organically. Google is constantly testing which content works best and shifting around who gets what spot.

Get Highlighted as a Quick Answer

They key here is that you are directly answering a specific question. Make a few pages that address questions or common inquiries around your charities or organizations that users might be searching. Use Keyword Planner or Google Trends to find high volume questions. Then test getting your content into a Knowledge Tile. It’s a departure from your usual content creation activities to think – What will people ask about my areas of expertise? How can I answer them directly and succinctly, in a list format or otherwise?

Give it a try, and see if you leap-frog your competition above organic results on the Google search results page. It can be a big boost, especially if your paid advertisement from a Google Grant appears directly above it. You will quickly own the results page and appear as a trusted expert on the topic. Try it today! How can we help?

Google Ads

Using AdWords Query Language (AWQL) for Google Grants Compliance

May 10, 2018

The AdWords Query Language (AWQL) is an invaluable tool for managing an AdWords account at scale. Once your charity’s Google Grants program has matured it will include many different campaigns, ad groups, and ads. Keeping track of your compliance with the Grant terms can be a manual nightmare. Luckily, there are some very easy scripts you can use to monitor and correct any non-compliant keywords or ad groups.

One of the newest rules forbids ads on keywords with a quality score of 1 or 2. This means that your keyword, ad copy, and destination content don’t align well. A keyword quality score only appears after your ad has run a sufficient number of times. The click-through rate will also influenced the final score. The more people who find your ad relevant, the higher your quality score will be. Consequently, your bids don’t need to be as high either.

Find all keywords with a quality score below 3 using one get() request with a few defined parameters:

function main(){ 
  var lowQualityKeywords = AdWordsApp.keywords() 
  .withCondition("QualityScore < 3") 
  .withCondition("Status = ENABLED") 
  .withCondition("AdGroupStatus = ENABLED") 
  .withCondition("CampaignStatus = ENABLED")
  .get();

  while (lowQualityKeywords.hasNext()){ 
    var kw = lowQualityKeywords.next();
    Logger.log(kw.getCampaign().getName() + 
    " - " + kw.getAdGroup().getName() + 
    ": \"" + kw.getText() + "\" " + 
    kw.getQualityScore() + "/10"); 
  }
}

This script parses enabled Campaigns, Ad Groups, and Keywords (ignoring paused) and list any with a quality score below 3. It then outputs to the logger window a list in this format:

Campaign Name – Ad Group: “Keyword” 1/10

You have two options once you have a full list of all low-quality keywords. You can pause each one to regain compliance. Or, you can investigate each ad and landing page to attempt to improve the score to 3 or above.

Need help implementing some time saving scripts in your AdWords account? Contact us today!

Best Practices

PayPal for Charitable Donations

April 25, 2018

There are two ways that PayPal can be used to accept charitable donations for your non-profit. Note that both will require you to verify your non-profit status and show a linked bank account in order to use the “donation” button and accept charitable contributions.

The first is to integrate Donate buttons into your web interface. You will need to have an account set up and verified, and then can use the “Make a PayPal Button” option. You can use one button throughout the website, or create dedicated buttons for use on specific programs. That way you can identify where the donations came from (which page or program) and allocate funds appropriately. The buttons won’t look any different but will contain a code that aligns with your account to tag the incoming funds for a specific program.

https://developer.paypal.com/docs/classic/paypal-payments-standard/integration-guide/donate_step_1/

The other is PayPal.me. This is a simple link that anybody can use to share their payment page with others. You can add a dollar amount to the end of the url: paypal.me/mycharity/25 for example to make a suggested contribution appear. Or you can simply provide the link. This may be easier and faster to get set up but allows for less configuration on incoming funds.

In both cases, users will leave your website and arrive on a branded PayPal site. Today, that should not concern too many donors as this is a fairly standard process. PayPal is a great low-cost way to integrate charitable contributions into your website. For confirmed charity accounts, current rates are 2.2% for online transactions and 2.7% on card readers, flat rate. Need help? Contact us today!

Google Ads

Google Ad Grants Compliance Report

April 7, 2018

This week, Google Ad Grants for AdWords sent users a compliance report for the new stipulations see forth in a January 2018 update to terms and conditions. Some of those checks included:

Complete Grant recipients’ survey
Total CTR higher than 5%
At least 2 ad groups per campaign
At least 2 ads per ad group
No quality scores below 3/10
No single-word or generic keywords

Google outlined these new rules before the new year. However, at that time, it was not clear how closely they would be policed. It was also unclear how violations would be communicated. Now is a good time to review your keywords, ad groups, and campaigns for compliance.

If your Grants program falls outside the new rules for two consecutive months, you risk going dark until the problems are corrected.

Search Engines

The Importance of HTTPS for Charities

March 23, 2018

Look up at the address bar of your charity website. Does the URL begin with HTTPS and show a green secure icon? If not, you could be having some serious problems with your website. And they are only going to get worse as time goes on.

The Dangers of No HTTPS

That little “S” on the end of the HTTP stands for “Secure.” If you don’t have one, the connection between your visitors and your servers is vulnerable to a number of attacks. One of your top priorities when asking for donations is to be a good steward of that transaction and data. You wouldn’t share your donor’s credit card number with just anybody. Therefore, you need to be sure your website follows the same ideals.

HTTPS Impact on Google Search Results

Aside from data privacy best practices, Google announced that non-secure websites will start to suffer in their ranking. You may not show up as often in relevant Google searches. That could in turn lead to less traffic on your website. Every new visitor is a new opportunity to spread your message, increase your reach, and get new donors and volunteers. It’s important to keep one eye on SEO as you monitor your websites performance and adhere to current standards.

Conversion Rates without HTTPS

Another thing it could hurt is your conversion rate. Take a look at the image below. This shows what a visitor to your non-secure website will see in the address bar of their Chrome browser.

Would you donate to a site with a warning at the top advising you not to enter credit card details? I wouldn’t. And neither should you.

There are lots of ways to accomplish securing your website on the HTTPS protocol. LetsEncrypt is a free provider of the necessary SSL certificates. If you’re not on HTTPS today, make this a top priority for the immediate future!

Search Engines

Google Search Console Reports

February 11, 2018

Google recently released a long overdue redesign of their SEO monitoring tool, Google Search Console. In the newly updated interface, reports show a much longer history of data. Knowing how to use that data can assist you in specifying exactly where to spend your energy improving the performance of your site. There are two main reports I use that I will discuss here.

Clicks and Impressions

This report will show you how two metrics. First, how many times you’ve showed up as a potential result in a Google search (Impressions). Second, how many times showing up in the list resulted in a user clicking through to your website (Clicks). The new console will allow up to 16 months of data, as opposed to the previous limit of 90 days. While it’s great to show this trended data over time and see it grow, the data just below the trend lines is even more interesting.

Queries

The queries report shows exactly which words the user entered that resulted in your Impression. If you’re showing at all, that’s a step in the right direction. You can then spend time evaluating your performance on each of the keywords. It might be worth it to create some dedicated content targeting those words since. Google already considers your domain to be an authority on the subject. Creating targeted content can get you onto page one and drive significant traffic to your site.

Pages

The pages report shows exactly which pages of your site are showing up in Google searches. This can be good for two reasons. First, it shows you what your most valuable content is so you can spend your limited hours each day where it will count the most. Second, it might show you that some less-than-desirable pages are being hit most often from organic searches. Quick, fix these pages up! Make them good landing pages with calls to action to drive towards your goals.

If you’re having any trouble getting your Google Search Console set up, or just have some questions on how best to interpret the data you’re seeing, contact us today for an SEO evaluation.

Search Engines

The most basic SEO test

January 28, 2018

Many people overlook the most basic search engine optimization (SEO) test you can perform on your website. SEO can seem daunting and overwhelming for those new to the topic. They may put it off, or think that it is too time consuming or expensive to tackle the subject. When I teach SEO, I say that SEO is just a couple hundred easy steps. Learning and mastering them all is not easy. That shouldn’t stop you from adding to your skill set over time.

The most basic SEO test you can perform on your website is to google it.

How to Most Effectively Google Yourself

Start by googling the name of your site or organization. Does your domain show on the first page of results? If not, click through a few pages to see if you might be languishing on page 2 or 3. If so, you have a bit of work to do. Are organizations with a similar name outranking you? Or might your social media profiles be outperforming your core website?

Tehnical Issues Uncovered

If your site cannot found, or shows the message, “No information is available for this page,” you might have technical problems with your site. This is most often due to your robots.txt file. The robots.txt file is a directive to search engines about how to best crawl your site. It is very common to set up a robots.txt file that says, “Go away! Don’t index me!” while your site is under construction or on a secondary development server. Many times, developers push that file into production. Its impact goes unnoticed until someone performs that most basic SEO test.

The last thing you can do is a site syntax search. In the Google search bar search for site:yourdomain.com (where yourdomain.com is your domain name). The “site:” syntax restricts Google results to just your domain. That definitely tells you if you have a technical problem with your SEO. If you still don’t come up, or get a no-information error, then investigate your robots.txt file. Look for Disallow: statements that are preventing your site from being found.

You’d be amazed how common this error is. It can make a huge difference once you rectify this error!

If you find your site not being indexed and you need assistance to correct it, contact us today. We can perform a preliminary SEO evaluation of your domain and correct this an other SEO errors.

Search Engines

SEO for Non-Profits

January 2, 2018

SEO for Non-Profits may seem daunting or overwhelming when you’re just starting out. To be fair, there is a lot that is working against you as a brand new website. Your domain authority quantifies your domain’s reputation. It is primarily calculated based on a measurement of how many backlinks your site has accumulated, and those take time. Not to mention that another factor in domain authority is simply that – age. As a brand new website, you will struggle to rank on Page 1 organically for any competitive terms.

Does that mean you should give up immediately and ignore SEO? No!

As with any digital marketing strategy, SEO will play just one part of raising awareness and conversions on your site. You should be aware of your SEO performance, and look for opportunities to improve. Set a list of targeted phrases you believe would bring you relevant traffic. Then, track your ranking for those phrases. Use these same keywords to inform your keyword strategy. This includes building additional content around certain topics to raise your reputation on search engines. Tools like Google Search Console can help you determine which keywords users were searching when they arrived on your site. You can capitalize on what you’re already ranking for to drive more, engaged traffic to your site.

But that’s the long game. You will grow domain authority over time and start to see more and more organic traffic. But, it will not happen over night. That’s where PPC, or pay-per-click advertising, can help. You can use the same keyword lists that you are monitoring for SEO and bid on them in Google AdWords. If you are a registered 501(c)(3) non-profit, you can even do this free of charge through Google’s Ad Grant program. Bidding on a keyword won’t affect your organic ranking. But, over time you can marry the two strategies to get the most real estate possible on page 1. Then start to drive relevant traffic to your site.

If you’re ready to look at the SEO performance of your site and drive more traffic for free to your non-profit, contact us today!

Google Ads

New Google Ad Grants Requirements coming in 2018

December 16, 2017

Google recently announced that Ad Grants recipients must hold their accounts to a higher standard than was previously required. If you are running ad campaigns for your non-profit, check to see if you are out of compliance. You may even consider pausing or removing existing campaigns to bring your account back into alignment. New regulations include:

Maintain a click-through ratio (CTR) of 5% or more
No keywords with a quality score below 2
No single-word keyword

You can no longer “set it and forget it” with your campaigns. Instead, you must continuously monitor performance and pause or adjust campaigns that are not providing sufficient click-through or quality scores. Ultimately, this may result in reduced traffic from previous years, but hopefully the remaining traffic is higher relevance.

Non-compliance for two consecutive months will result in the immediate suspension of your account. This is not something you want to get wrong! If you need help adjusting or maintaining your program, or are thinking about starting a digital marketing campaign for your charity, contact us today.

For more information, see Google’s official help section on Google Ad Grants requirements.