5 Essential SEO Techniques To Master In 2015.

SEO has truly come into its own as a marketing channel, but columnist Jim Yu argues that that doesn't mean we should rest on our laurels.

Each year, SEO evolves to become a more sophisticated discipline. As marketers refine their skills sets, as search engines improve their search products, and as brands across industries continue to see the impact that organic search can have on their growth, search engine optimization has come from humble beginnings to become a recognized strategic field of marketing.

Organic Search Past & Present

Industries across the board benefitted from SEO in 2014, and there is no sign of this slowing down in 2015. According to this study by the National Retail Federation, search marketing — including SEO — was the most effective source for acquiring new customers in 2014 for 85 percent of online retailers.

Other data points last year showed that organic search was a key starting point for brands to put their products and services in front of the target customer. According to this data from Kenshoo, search is the starting point for the majority of people looking to book travel (58 percent of leisure travelers and 64 percent of business travelers).

In a study conducted by BrightEdge (my employer), we discovered organic search was the largest driver of traffic and revenue for almost every industry analyzed. For B2B marketers, organic search drives over 51% of traffic.

So, what can SEO practitioners do to keep the momentum going in the new year? Following are five areas in SEO that should be on every marketer’s list to master in 2015.

1. Map Strategy To Audience & Competitive Insights

Over the years, SEOs have become really good at understanding keyword intent and segmenting the marketing strategy to match intent.

With the loss of keyword data in Google Analytics, and the general progression of SEO as a discipline, we are starting to merge more traditional marketing concepts into SEO to create a new way of segmenting audiences.

Now, we must merge quantitative data around the topics that are driving search demand and pair that with market insights about who our personas are, and what types of information is useful to them on their buying journey.

In addition, we need to gain an understanding of what the competition is doing for those topics driving demand, because as we know, search is a zero sum game.

That means finding data points that can help us:

• Identify new ways to tackle adjacent markets
• Discover new keywords to target
• Understand what types of content perform
• See where the competition is doing well, and where you can do better

Progressive SEO means technical, analytical and traditional marketing all rolled into one.

2. Align Your Content & SEO Teams

Your SEO efforts are really only as good as the experience you’re creating for your target persona. That’s why great SEO needs to work in tandem with great content. If you’ve taken the time to explore Step 1 in this article, you have a good foundation for content and SEO alignment that’s focused on the user.

Data coming from the Content Marketing Institute in 2014 show that B2Bs and B2Cs are embracing content in the form of blog posts and web content as a key facet of their content marketing.

Many of us believe that that the best approach is to start with strategic content and apply SEO best practices to help maximize its value and visibility online. Google algorithms like Panda tell us that user experience and quality are what we should all be striving for.

And while recommendations on making creative content and technical SEO come together sound great in theory, many brands are still struggling with which department or team does what and in what order.

I talked about this in a 2014 article on content and SEO, where I touched on one solution to ensure that the creative and technical teams are working in tandem: Establish a clear workflow from content creation to optimization.

I’ll mention again one important takeaway from that discussion for brands that are trying to define how technical and creative teams can work together: Uncover all the roles and skill sets on the digital marketing team, and discover where overlap and cross-training opportunities exist for creative folks to learn SEO, and SEO folks to learn creative.

For more insights on creating value through your content in 2015, I would recommend reading this recent article over on Marketing Land.

3. Make Mobile SEO A Priority

We’ve been hearing about it for years: Websites and brands should have a mobile marketing strategy. In 2015, it’s safe to say that the year of mobile is well upon us.

In fact, mobile has surpassed desktop in digital media time spent by device, according to comScore:

May [2014] turned out to be a banner month for mobile as it delivered on some huge milestones which underscored just how impressive the medium’s ascendance has been in the past few years. Mobile platforms – smartphones and tablets – combined to account for 60% of total digital media time spent, up from 50% a year ago.

When it comes to search engine optimization, creating a mobile site should be at the core of any solid SEO plan in 2015. But be careful in your configuration — research from BrightEdge last year found that mobile configuration errors resulted in a 68 percent loss in smartphone traffic on average.

And even though Google recommends a responsive design, you may find that a hybrid approach suits you best for your marketing needs.

And remember that whichever route you choose, Google wants sites to render above-the-fold content in under one second. Slow sites could negatively impact mobile rankings.

4. Find Measurement & Reporting That Works

While the research studies we read on the impact of organic search are important for gauging how we’re doing as an industry, we still struggle as brands and marketers to measure results, quantify our efforts, and continue to prove our position for SEO budgets.

Even back in 2013, we were talking about the need for marketers with analytics skills. And in fact, according to the CMOSurvey.org, 44 percent of survey respondents said they lacked the metrics to demonstrate the impact of marketing in 2014.

This sentiment was echoed in an Adobe survey in 2014 that showed 49 percent of marketers used intuition, not data, when thinking about where to invest marketing spend.

Reporting does not have to become increasingly complex. In 2015, SEOs should focus on simplifying their data sources and work to uncover the right information via structured data sources.

That means identifying the KPIs that truly matter to prove marketing efforts (those that impact the business), and obtaining the technology that can pull multiple data sources into one platform to provide real insights in performance.

5. Integrate SEO Data Across Teams

Don’t forget that the SEO practitioner or team is working towards some of the same goals as other teams are. When these various marketing teams share their learnings and work in tandem for cross-channel marketing, the concerted effort can be much stronger than when performed alone.

Take SEO and PPC as one example of two channels that have a symbiotic relationship. SEO data can inform PPC, and vice versa. Reports from Google, Kenshoo and others show just how much organic and paid search can impact one another’s success.

In 2015, are there ways you can share your SEO data with other teams to create a concerted effort in your marketing campaigns?

Making Small Steps Toward Mastery

The old saying that “life is a journey, not a destination” can also be applied to SEO.

Search engine optimization should be a part of a website for its lifetime, continuously improving its ability to make a brand (and its content) be more visible and to create a better experience for users.

You can’t master SEO in a day, but you can resolve to make small steps in each of the areas of SEO that will make your site better and your efforts more impactful in 2015.

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Some opinions expressed in this article may be those of a guest author and not necessarily Search Engine Land. Staff authors are listed here.

What should I write in my blog and how to choose post titles?

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When choosing what to write in your blog (topic, article titles, content etc.) it is important to understand 2 basic concepts:

First is that content is the most important success factor of any web site or blog so this is where you should spend most of your time and second you should realize that you are not alone and so you don’t only have to create excellent content but you also have to compete with other web sites that create good content as well. I will explain below why this is important and what you can do to minimize your competition.

What should I write about?

In my seo tips for beginners article I have explained what is consider good quality content but for the purpose of this article I will go one step further and explain how to distinguish your content from the competition which is essentially the answer to the question: what should I write about so that it stands out.

Before to start writing you next blog post ask yourself these questions:

1. What would be the topic of my post?
2. Will my post answer a question or solve a problem?
3. What others are writing about the particular topic?
4. How can I differentiate my content from existing posts and make it better?

Once you have the above questions answered your next step is to decide on the actual blog post title, write the post, publish it and promote it.

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How to choose your blog post titles?

The blog post title is important for 3 main reasons:

1. A good title will attract more readers and social media attention
2. A good title is essential for SEO purposes
3. Blog titles should help both readers and search engines understand what the post is all about. Google has recently released a one-page cheat sheet stressing the importance of page titles for SEO purposes so it is not something you should neglect for any reason.

So, you know what will be the topic and type of your post and the next step is to choose the actual blog post title. This is where the Google keyword tool comes into rescue.

How to use the Google keyword tool for choosing your blog post titles?

The Google keyword tool among many other useful features gives you 2 pieces of information that are important when choosing blog titles: The number of exact searches per keyword and the competition level for that keyword. I will use these 2 in the example below to help you understand how to choose blog titles that have less competition and thus increase your chances of ranking higher for that term.

Let’s look at the following real example:

What would be the topic of my post?	Weight loss
Will my post answer a question or solve a problem?	Yes, my intention is to explain to my readers how to lose weight
What others are writing about the particular topic?	Searching “how to lose weight” “how to lose weight fast” “weight loss” “I want to lose weight” “how to lose pounds” brings a number of results from trusted web sites and my chances of ranking for these terms are minimum to zero
How can I differentiate my content and make it better?	I want to take a step-by-step approach to weight loss and explain how to calculate the weight you should lose and how to create your plan

Notice in the above table that I added the note “my chances of ranking for these terms are minimum to zero”. This is important and what this means is that even if I write a super article with the title “how to lose weight” (or any of the above titles) I will probably never be able to rank in the first positions because there are already trusted web sites in the first page and I need to give Google many concrete and powerful reasons to give me a good ranking.

In reality this is unlikely to happen so this is where I go to the keyword tool.

The first things I do are set the location to ALL Countries and the Match Types to Exact.

Next I start searching for keywords. Continuing with the example above I started searching with the phrase “how to lose pounds”.

From the results what I am interested at the moment is the Competition column and the Global monthly searches column. In particular I am looking for Low competition long trail keyword ideas with some monthly searches. Of course the more monthly searches a keyword have the better, but don’t forget that what is displayed there is only an indication and I have found many times keywords to bring much more traffic than the estimate given here. Also the lower the numbers, the greater are the chances for the estimates to be inaccurate.

Back to our example, fortunately for the term I choose there are many low competition keyword ideas that can satisfy my needs as outlined in the table above.

I did search for the other terms as well but without spending too much time I decided that a keyword that has low competition and a good amount of global monthly searches and fits my topics subject and purpose is “how to lose 15 pounds”.

To cut a long story short and also convince that this methodology works you can search Google for the above term and you will see my article on page 1, position 1.

You can also see below a screenshot from Google Analytics showing that in a period of one month the particular page has brought in twice the traffic estimated by the keyword tool.

So, to summarize this post it is important to remember that:

1. You don’t only have to create good content but you also have to select your blog titles carefully after doing a keyword analysis using the keyword tool and a competition analysis by searching for those terms on Google.
2. By selecting blog titles with low competition you increase the changes of ranking higher
3. Choose your blog topic first, find the title and then write the content
4. Once published make sure that you promote your blog post in the best possible way
5. Include keywords in your blog post titles but don’t overdo it (see my example above and notice the title I have selected which contains the keywords I want to rank for).
6. Don’t follow the above procedure for all your blog posts. Choose in advance which blog posts to optimize with the above method but also make sure that you have non-optimized posts in your web site/blog as well.

How to Write Title Tags For Search Engine Optimization?

Today we're going back to basics! And nothing is more basically important to a site than properly written title tags. You know the ones that used to appear in the little blue bars in your browsers. Most modern browsers try to hide these, though that doesn't stop them being helpful!

So what is a title tag? Why is it important to SEO, and how do you write the darn things?

Meta Tags

First let's talk about meta tags. Meta elements are HTML or XHTML elements used to provide information about a web page for the search engines and website users.

Such elements must be placed as tags in the head section of a HTML document. These elements are the:

• Title Tag
• Description
• Keywords (No one uses these anymore and you can get spam "points" for overuse on Bing, so just forget them. If you have keyword stuffed "spammy" ones, you probably want to fix those.)

What is a Title Tag?

Title tags are part of the meta tags that appear at the top of your HTML inside the < head> area. Think of title tags like the title of the chapter of a book. It tells people and search engines what your page is about.

Title tags are also part of what makes people decide whether to visit your site when it shows up in the search results. The title tag should contain important keywords to help the search engine determine what the page is about.

Write title tags for humans; format them for search engines.

NOTE: Every experienced SEO has their own unique methods to doing this, so I'm going to give you best practices along with some of my methods. However, there are a million ways to write a title tag.

What Does the Title Tag Look Like?

The title tag looks like this in your HTML code:

<title>Important Words Go Here </title>

Here is how title tags appear in a browser that uses the bar to display title tags (other browsers might only use the tab space or not show them at all):

Finally, here's where Google shows the title tag:

REMEMBER: A title tag is THE MOST IMPORTANT SINGLE TAG in your page. It tells the search engines what your page is about. It is still vitally important to your SEO strategy.

Quick Checklist

When you're writing your title tag what do you need to know? Here's a quick checklist with some tips on how to write optimized title tags:

• Length: Title tags should be a maximum of 70 characters long, including spaces.
• Keyword Placement: Your most important words (keywords) need to be first in your title tag, with your least important words being last in the title tag (most to least). However, if you're working in a language that reads right-to-left, then it is reversed, and it would be least important to most important.
• Keyword Separation: Use pipes | to separate important (keyword) phrases (no commas, underscores, dashes or any other punctuation unless the keyword is written that way).
• Wording: Keep your important phrases short and simple. Leave out words that would make it read like a sentence. (e.g., and, if, but, then, etc.)
• Company Name: If your company name is not part of the important (keyword) phrases, put it at the end of the title tag; if it is part of your important words, put it as the first words in the title tag. Some SEOs will tell you to leave it out. You can leave it in for branding purposes – so people will see the brand and click. This isn't valid for all sites.
• DON'T DUPLICATE Title Tags: They must be written differently for every page. Don't mass replicate your title tags.
• Make It Relevant: Title tags must be written to be descriptive of the content on the page. (e.g., the About Page would be:

About | Important Keywords | Company Name

or

Important Keywords | About Us | Company Name

Google & Title Tags

Sometimes Google doesn't like your title tag. In fact, sometimes Google thinks it can pick a better one, so it will rewrite the tag for you. There are several places it might get this information, most of them you won't prefer to one you crafted yourself.

While there isn't any assurance your title tag won't be replaced, make sure you write a title tag that is page related, content descriptive, short and sweet, and not keyword stuffed. This is your one defense.

Keyword Stuffed Title Tags

You've probably come across badly written title tags that try to rank for everything or repeat a word over and over. Keyword stuffing is the worst offense when it comes to title tags.

Say your site is trying to rank for Blue Bells and Yellow Bells. Many times you will see the main keyword repeated multiple times across the title tag. It might appear like this:

Blue Bells, Yellow Bells, All Types of Bells | Bells Bells and More | Doors.com

This is bad title tag writing. You don't need to repeatedly write the keyword. Google especially can pick up the keywords like your eyes can read them, so you would best to rewrite this as

Blue & Yellow Bells | Doorbells | Doors.com

We removed the extra words, combined the products (if possible you would split these products to separate pages, a blue and a yellow, but this isn't always feasible or desirable) and added a category keyword which would appear in the middle of the title tag on all doorbell related page titles, then end it with the domain name (again this is for branding purposes – there are also good reasons to not do this, it depends on the SEO).

Now our title tag is short, sweet, simple, and to the point. We have also categorized it and added in branding for good measure.

We also took out the word "and" and replaced it with an ampersand (&) so that you don't accidentally relate the two items and make Google think you want people who are looking for Blue AND Yellow Bells.

And there you go, a basic lesson in title tag writing. This can be the most challenging and fun part of any SEO's work! Or should that be "Inbound Marketer's" work?

Some Title Tag Writing Examples

Let's look at a few examples of writing title tags with actual examples.

If your important words (keywords) were "Charlie Sheen" and "Winning" your title tag would be written in that order:

Charlie Sheen Winning

Charlie Sheen would be the first words in the tag.

Now what if we had more than one set of words? What if my keywords were "Charlie Sheen Winning"and "Tiger's Blood"? Your title tag would still be written with "Charlie Sheen Winning" as the first words in the tag. Then you would add a pipe | and "Tiger's Blood" as the second phrase:

Charlie Sheen Winning | Tiger's Blood

Don't use hyphens, underscores, commas or any other type of character – just pipes.

Now what if we had more than one set of words and a company name we were not worried about optimizing for (the company name was not part of the reputation issue). If my words were "Charlie Sheen Winning" and "Tiger's Blood" and "CBS", you would separate these three phrases with pipes, with CBS last and farthest from the beginning, which Google sees as the least important phrase:

Charlie Sheen Winning | Tiger's Blood | CBS

The company name can be repeated in every title tag as long as it as not part of the important words and appears at the far right end of the title tag.

What about sentences? Couldn't you just write a sentence such as "Charlie Sheen Says Winning And Tiger's Blood And Gets CBS Riled Up"? You could, but those extra words like "says", "and", and "riled", dilute your important words and make them less important to content, so best to keep it short, simple, and clear. Leave out the extra words.

Title Tag Writing Pop Quiz!

When using strict SEO principles. Which are the BEST title tags for the important (keywords): (pick 2) "Charlie Sheen" "Winning" "Howard Stern Show" when optimizing (trying to rank for) the words"Charlie Sheen (1) Winning (2)"

1. Charlie Sheen Winning on the Howard Stern Show
2. Howard Stern Show & Charlie Sheen | Winning
3. Charlie Sheen is Winning Points on the Howard Stern Show
4. Charlie Sheen | Winning | Howard Stern Show
5. Charlie Sheen and Howard Stern Winning the Show
6. Winning | Charlie Sheen on the Howard Stern Show
7. Charlie Sheen Winning | Howard Stern Show
8. Doesn't matter as long as the words are all there

5 types of retargeting every marketer should know of.

Digital marketing is a fast paced field. Even if new marketing technologies tend to be slowly adopted (think marketing automation, programmatic ad buying), digital marketing concepts and tactics spread easily.

If you need proof, think how fast viewability became one of the buzzwords for 2015 advertising predictions after Google dropped the bomb that only 54% of online ad impressions are viewable.

Even if retargeting has been around for some while, the concept has changed, grown and adapted to fit many tactics. If you don’t want to appear silly, read on and get acquainted with all the available retargeting forms.

RETARGETING INCEPTION

Retargeting was first introduced by Google in March 2010. Since then, Google has grown and adapted the tools it offers marketers.

Facebook joined the party in December 2012 when they launched FBX – the platform that allows advertisers to use third party data to target users on Facebook inventory. Thus social retargeting emerged and Twitter followed in on the trend in 2014.

Ok, so why the short history lesson? That’s how site, social and search retargeting emerged. Let’s take a look at all the different types of retargeting and what they stand for.

1. SITE RETARGETING

This is the one that started it all. Site retargeting is the process of showing ads to people who have visited your site, but left without converting. This is the broadest definition of retargeting because it doesn’t take into consideration the inventory where the ads are displayed.

It simply refers to the process of using data to bring your visitor back to reduce shopping cart abandonment, increase conversions and drive brand awareness.

2. EMAIL/CRM RETARGETING

Even if email alone is a very strong driver of sales ($44 ROI for every dollar invested) and a very popular channel among marketers (according to a Forbes study, 67% of marketers say that it is key for attracting and engaging prospects), there is plenty of room for improvement. Enter: email retargeting.

Email retargeting allowed you to show ads to users or subscribers who have opened your emails. It worked like traditional site retargeting. When an user opens the email, a cookie is stored in his browser. Using that cookie, the user is identified when he browses other websites or social networks and sees your ad.

However, email retargeting stopped being a viable solution once Google changed the way it display images. Because Google caches images, the retargeting pixel can’t be dropped into the users’ browser. Without that, you can’t build lists of users to show ads to.

The alternative all previous email retargeting providers adopted is CRM retargeting. With CRM retargeting, you can show ads to users based on their email address. All you need to do is upload the email address list to your retargeting provider. They do the hard work of matching the data you provide with data from other online/offline CRM to identify the user and show him your ads. Automatically, of course.

This type of retargeting is similar to Facebook custom audiences. With custom audiences, you need to upload a list of emails, phone numbers or users ids. Facebook does the matching, identifies the users and shows them your ads.

With CRM retargeting, the success rate depends on the match settings you select when you upload your data. Also, if you want to run this type of retargeting, you need to choose a company that provides this service such as Ad Roll or Perfect Audience.

3. SOCIAL/SOCIAL MEDIA RETARGETING (FACEBOOK AND TWITTER)

Social/ social media retargeting is displaying ads on social networks to, you’ve guessed it – people who visited your site without converting.

While the name encompasses both platforms (Twitter, Facebook – Linkedin, at the time of writing, does not allow retargeting), it does not imply that you’re running ads on both platforms. You could be running retargeting ads only on Facebook or only on Twitter for instance. However, it’s good to know the term – you never know when you might need it.

What’s different between site retargeting and social media retargeting? Like we mentioned earlier, site retargeting only mentions the process, it doesn’t say anything about the channel. Before the Facebook Exchange, the default channel for retargeting ads were banner ads displayed on websites. With social media retargeting, you’re specific about where you’re having your ads shown.

4. REMARKETING LISTS FOR SEARCH ADS

While the other types or retargeting are available from multiple companies, remarketing lists for search ads are available only in Google Adwords. With it, you can use your current remarketing lists and reach site visitors when they go back to Google to make a search. Instead of showing banner ads, you show your users classic search text ads.

Because there’s been less talk about it, remarketing lists for search ads is not as popular as other types of remarketing. Like with social, still, it’s good to know the term and what it actually refers to.

Remarketing lists for search ads sometimes gets confused with search retargeting because they both use “search” and “retargeting”. However, they couldn’t be more different. Remarketing lists for search ads allows you to show search engine text ads to users who have been to your site. Search retargeting allows you to show banners and Facebook ads to people who have never visited your site, but have searched for relevant keywords and phrases, more on it belo

5. SEARCH RETARGETING

Even if it contains the word “retargeting”, search retargeting is very different from the other types mentioned. While all the others are ways of getting users that you have somehow came in contact with (either they visited or subscribed to your website), search retargeting allows you to reach highly potential, entirely new customers for your business.

Search retargeting allows you to show your ads to users who have previously searched for keywords that are related to your business, but have never visited your website. For instance, if you have an online shoe store, your ad could appear to users who have searched for  “high-heeled shoes” or “Red shoes”.

Search retargeting is a great way to reach users beyond their initial search. Because it targets recent interest, it’s also highly effective. Ads can be displayed both on Facebook and the web.

Now, back to you. Are there any other types of retargeting that you know about? What else would you want to know about each type?

6 Types of Retargeting Every Marketer Should Know

When it comes to the topic of retargeting, most marketers instantly think of search retargeting, which they happen to already be running at least one campaign for. Hard to blame them, since search retargeting is, in fact, the fastest growing type of retargeting and has proven to have some of the highest returns.

But the truth of the matter is, highly effective marketers explore other types of retargeting to acquire and engage potential audience. During the “PPC Beyond Search” panel at SES San Francisco 2012, Dax Hamman broke down six different types of retargeting every marketer should know.

1. Search Retargeting

When using search retargeting, you’re essentially going after individuals on search engines who have searched using keywords or phrases relevant to your business. Keep in mind that when deciding to use this type of retargeting, you're making assumptions based on the searcher’s intent.

Just because they searched a term that is relevant to your business, doesn’t necessarily mean that they are ready to make a purchase or be bombarded by “buy now” banners. Be sure to take intent into consideration and serve your creative accordingly.

2. Site Retargeting

Think of site retargeting as one step closer contact, since the searcher has actually landed on and visited your site at this point. Once they do so, you can tag them and follow them around the internet with your messages.

The most important thing to keep in mind when deciding to use site retargeting, is to identify certain actions as “tag-worthy.”

Let’s say you sell PPC management software. Would you tag someone who visits your blog to read a post and someone else who watches a video of an online demo the same way? Would you tag the blog reader at all?

3. SEM/SEO Retargeting

SEM/SEO retargeting is closely related to site retargeting and has to do with the search terms used prior to clicking to or arriving on your site. Couple someone’s search term used to land on your site with the actions they take on it and you have given yourself a whole new level of insight into their intent. Use this to refine your creative and perfect your message to them.

4. Email Retargeting

As apparent from the name, it allows you to retarget people based on actions they have taken on your emails. Engagement levels are important to take note of in this case, since someone opening an email should not be treated as someone else who clicked a link, forwarded it, or didn’t even open it at all.

5. Contextual Retargeting

In all the sessions I’ve moderated, never have I heard an “oooooh” from the audience as when contextual retargeting was introduced. In essence, it involves exchanging pixels between sites that are highly relevant to a searcher and targeting to each others’ visitors. For example, think of an airline and local hotel site targeting each other’s audience based on destinations that were searched or booked.

6. Engagement Retargeting

Perhaps the least commonly used by the average advertiser, this type of retargeting works exceptionally well with those who offer channels of engagement like videos, rich media, Flash games, etc. Based on the type of action the user takes, advertisers can infer things like intent and level of engagement to serve highly targeted display ads.

Summary

With so many different types of retargeting, advertisers are finding more ways (and more importantly, a second chance) to reach their target audience. When used correctly and with the right creative, advertisers can expect large boosts in CTRs and conversions for their campaigns.

Apart from search, have you used any of the other forms of retargeting? Which ones have proven to be the most effective for you? Share your thoughts and comments below.

An In-Depth Comparison of Remarketing and Retargeting Services.

A customer steps into your shop, inquires about a particular product, and then leaves without buying. You know there’s a potential sale, and there’s every chance that person will be buying a similar product sooner rather than later.

How would you like to send some of your sales people to follow that visitor, reminding them of your business wherever they go? In fact, reminding them to the extent that your business/brand is the first and only name that comes to mind when they are about to make a purchase?

Sounds like an insane idea in the real world. Even if your sales staff doesn’t get beaten up for stalking, the cost alone would make it impossible to pull off.

But that’s exactly what remarketing (a/k/a retargeting) services enable you to do in the online world.

Remarketing is great for many reasons. For example:

• Reduced cost per impression
• Better conversion rates
• Improved ROI
• Precise targeting
• Cost effective branding

It’s no wonder remarketing has been taking the online world by storm.

But… It just seems so difficult, so hard to understand and set up.

Is it?

Reeeeallly?

Truth be told, setting up a killer remarketing campaign is surprisingly easy. As long as you understand the basics, there are great remarketing platforms out there ready to help you smash your ROI targets. These platforms take care of all of the technicals, like leaving a cookie to earmark visitors, monitoring their behavior, making guesses about their intent, or working with a “display network” or “Real Time Bidding exchange.” Pretty cool, really, because they leave you more time to work on strategy and branding while they handle all of the technicalities.

Let’s dive in and take a look at some of the main platforms you can use.

AdRoll

AdRoll has been providing various online advertising options to businesses for more than five years, but they are best known for their retargeting plans. And while it’s not always a testimony to the efficacy of a service, with companies like Moz, Levi’s, Red Vines, and Salesforce using the platform, you can think they must be doing something right.

• AdRoll works with advertising partners like Facebook Exchange, Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft, allowing you to reach 98% of sites on the Internet.
• Speaking of ROI, AdRoll retargeting customers earn $10 for every $1 spent on average. (At least that’s what they claim on their website.)
• The guys at AdRoll are really good at advance targeting techniques, likecustomer segmentation, geo targeting, and more. Using their platform, you can target or exclude site visitors based on their actions, create groups of users based on purchase intent (like adding a product to a shopping cart), and set up advanced conversion tracking rules. Check out the image below to see a quick snapshot of this in action:

Customer Segmentation – AdRoll

• AdRoll makes retargeting quite simple with features like easy-to-read analytics. And for sites with over 60k uniques per month, they also offer their Liquid Adsservice. LiquidAds enables advertisers to personalize each impression based on the product pages that an individual user visits.

The image above shows the dynamic elements of an AdRoll LiquidAd. Each element can be tailored depending on your targeting preference.

• AdRoll is an official Facebook partner and provides one of the best and easiest-to-use platforms for customer retargeting on Facebook, especially the news feed ads.

A Facebook Newsfeed ad powered by AdRoll. Yep – AdRoll can remarket to your potential customers who left your site and went to check Facebook.

• Setting up a Facebook news feed campaign is quite simple. All you need to do is choose your weekly budget, schedule, targeted locations, and max CPM bid. Then select your visitor segments. Your ads will start appearing in their news feed. The ads will start showing to anyone who has been cookied on your website, regardless of whether they liked or interacted with your Facebook fan page. The ads will start showing in the person’s news feed simply because they visited your website in the past and you have targeted them in your ad campaign. Pretty cool!

• AdRoll has good transparent pricing and solid customer support, both in terms of responsiveness and level of expertise.

AdRoll in a nutshell: Easily the frontrunner when it comes to retargeting platforms. While it is a little on the pricey side, the service and ease of their platform make it worth your marketing dollars.

Chango

Chango specializes in search retargeting (though they are offering site retargeting solutions as well). Search retargeting doesn’t require a potential customer to visit your website before your ads start appearing on their screens. Instead, customer interest and relevancy are decided by a recent search they performed on Google, Yahoo, or Bing.

So, if someone performs a search for a product/service on a search engine and lands on a website that is part of Chango’s data network, Chango will earmark the user and let you advertise to that user with a customized ad promoting relevant products and services.

• Chango has a massive network of data partners. You will get access to more than 8 billion search events and search data from Google, Bing, and Yahoo, which means you also can get some great keyword ideas or suggestions.
• You will get a dedicated account manager, meaning you won’t have to waste countless hours trying to set up, optimize, or manage your campaigns.
• You can target customers from some of the best markets like US, UK, and Canada.
• Chango has certain indicators and scores allowing you to assess each visitor according to what they do before, during, and after visiting your website. They call it “intentscore,” so you can target the visitors who seem to have the “intent” of buying a particular product.
• If you’ve got a product feed, Chango offers dynamic creative for online stores, allowing you to create ads with recently viewed products the customer browsed at your e-commerce store.

Chango points to take home: Chango prides itself on having a huge network of data partners. Using their search retargeting option to target potential customers with an intent to buy, will give you an upper hand over your competitors when it comes to SEM.

Chango isn’t for the fainthearted, and their minimum price is 10k to set up a campaign. If you are just taking your first steps in the remarketing world, it might be wise to use one of the other platforms before you dive into the deep end with Chango.

Perfect Audience

The guys at Perfect Audience provide a retargeting platform for those who’d like to keep it as simple as possible. All you need to do is insert a script/code in the body section of your website, create lists of visitors’ types to retarget, design campaigns to target certain segments in your retargeting lists, and your ads will start appearing on visitors’ screens, so it’s as simple as ABC (and D).

• You get to remarket your products or services to lost customers on Facebook, a platform with a user base of more than 950 million people. When a visitor leaves your website or a certain page without ordering, you will be able to retarget that visitor on Facebook. Similar to AdRoll, Perfect Audience offers both standard Facebook ads and the ability to retarget in the Facebook news feed. Check out this ad they actually ran themselves when they started their beta testing:

A Perfect Audience Facebook Newsfeed ad

• For online stores using platforms like Shopify, 3dcart, Magento, andVolusion, Perfect Audience offers practical solutions to retarget visitors who are leaving without buying anything.
• You don’t need to pay a setup or maintenance fee, which makes it an ideal choice for small businesses with tight budgets.
• Their “site reports” actually show you the names of websites which your ads have been served on, how many impressions were served, and how many clicks were attained. Using this data, you can easily see where your ads are performing the best and where your target users are spending most of their online time. Further to this, if you notice that one or a few sites aren’t performing well, then you can “blacklist” that site from your campaign to focus on more profitable exposure.
• As suggested earlier, Perfect Audience focuses on keeping it as simple as possible. They even have a 5-minute quick start guide with instructions for setting up and starting to use their platform in a matter of minutes.
• If you are sending emails or newsletters to a list of subscribers, you can retarget recipients who’ve opened the email. All you will need to do is place an image pixel on your HTML email template. Then anyone who opens your email in HTML format will be cookied and on your remarketing list. Of course, this opens a plethora of marketing opportunities. If you are a little creative, I’m sure you can think of a few fun ways to use this feature. The great part is its simple to build out your list. Take a quick look at this shot of me creating a remarketing list of past buyers of an e-commerce business:

With Perfect Audience you can target people who have open your emails.

• Perfect Audience also has a huge knowledgebase with short to-the-point manuals, quality guidelines, video tutorials, and dynamic ads.

Perfect Audience points to take home: Perfect Audience is a great option for small businesses that are keen to learn a bit more about online advertising without spending massive amounts. The range of options is great for e-commerce stores using third party platforms like WordPress, Shopify, Magento, or 3dcart.

Triggit

Triggit has many different advertising options for their clients, but, like Perfect Audience, they seem to be focusing more on Facebook ads. That’s mainly because they strongly believe in the power of social media when it comes to converting a visitor into a prospective buyer. So, you will find many tools and features made specifically around the Facebook Exchange.

• You can set your own budget, frequency caps (so that people don’t get annoyed by your ads), maximum bid, and a lot more while retargeting your visitors on Facebook and around the web.
• While their reach doesn’t quite hit the highs of AdRoll or Perfect Audience, Triggit more than makes up for it by offering more advanced targeting features like frequency caps, bidding rules, and campaign goals
• The Dynamic Creatives feature allows you to use custom heading, custom dates, and custom images in your Facebook ads to improve click through rates (CTR.) Not only can you retarget with products that the visitor has recently browsed on your website, you can integrate your product feeds and the software will dynamically create multiple ads for the same purpose.

• In addition to the basics, there also are some advance retargeting options available, like targeting the people in your remarketing list according to their location (i.e., FBX Geo-Targeting [advertising to Facebook users according to their location]), one-off product marketing, custom reporting, customer segmentation, and creating unique strategies for different segments.

A Geo-Targeting Campaign in Triggit

• Triggit claims having access to more than 10 billion impressions a day, from millions of websites around the Internet.
• Triggit is one of the oldest DSPs in the market, so they have plenty of experience when it comes to the art of retargeting.

Triggit points to take home: Triggit specializes in retargeting via Facebook Exchange, and that is where their strength lies.

ReTargeter

ReTargeter is comparatively new, but it already has shown itself to be a strong contender when it comes to remarketing platforms. Retargeter offers a wide range of marketing and remarketing solutions, including site retargeting, Facebook Exchange, CRM Retargeting, email retargeting, search retargeting, and short tag (you can use a custom link shortener and when you post that link on social media, anyone who clicks on it will see your full ad popup AND be cookied for later.), to name a few.

• The service is aimed at sites with over 30,000 unique visitors per month.
• You can create target ads according to the demographic, geographic, income, or intent of your customers.
• Since they are not focusing more on a certain type of retargeting, you can choose from a variety of options; for example, retargeting visitors who have browsed your website, subscribers who have opened your newsletter, or people who’ve engaged with you on social media.
• ReTargeter does not restrict their inventory based on spending level, so you will get full network access.
• You can use frequency capping; for example, showing users 15-20 advertisements per month, so that they don’t start getting annoyed by your ads appearing left, right, and center.
• Their services start at $1500 per month (and you will get up to 175,000 impressions for that price), and all the campaigns are managed by a dedicated account manager.

ReTargeter points to take home: A great solution for larger volume sites. ReTargeter has some unique advertising solutions which will put you ahead of the pack.

Google

Since we’re talking about retargeting, we’d better take a quick look at what the big “G” offers. With a massive display network encompassing more than a million websites, videos, and apps, there are plenty of opportunities to retarget successfully with Google.

The service can be set up easily from inside your Google AdWords account. All you need to do is add the remarketing tag to your website, build your ads, set up your campaign, and off you go.

In your AdWords account, head to the shared library (from campaigns tab) to create a list of people visiting a certain section or page of your website. Check out this image below to see exactly where to go:

Once in the shared library, click on “view” under Audiences as per below:

• Google offers super simple targeting options. You can target people depending on their actions, time of visit, and the specific pages they landed on. Take a look below to see a real life example of this:

• Google has recently introduced remarketing lists for search ads (RLSA) with the aim of allowing advertisers to craft campaigns aimed at people who have searched for a particular keyword, regardless of whether they have visited your site or not.
• Google remarketing takes place on the Google Display Network. This means you can reach close to 10% of the internet through their platform.

Google points to take home: A simple solution for users who are comfortable with the AdWords platform. It is limited to the Google Display Network and doesn’t offer any Facebook retargeting options. This service is great for people looking for an easy, quick solution without any headaches.