Businessfinancing.co.uk, a financial publisher based in the UK, created an infographic guide aimed at helping small businesses get started with advertising on Amazon.

The infographic, A Small Business Guide to Amazon Advertising, presents a visual summary of advertising options available on the platform and includes some tips that small business can use to get started with launching a campaign.

In this post, we’ll summarize some of the key insights from the guide, including a list of next steps that will help you get ads running on Amazon in no time.

Unless otherwise noted, all statistics and images in this post have been taken, with permission, from the original infographic produced by Businessfinancing.co.uk.

Amazon’s enormous retail reach

Based on gross merchandise value (GMV), Amazon is the second largest ecommerce website in the world (second only to China’s Alibaba) and the largest in the U.S.

It receives over 200 million visits each month and is the first-choice ecommerce destination for many shoppers, with 56% of consumers visiting them before any other website. About 47% of consumers begin their product search on Amazon, versus other search engines such as Google or Bing.

According to a 2018 Poll, nearly 70% of small businesses who sell a product online say that Amazon has had a positive impact on their sales. Advertising on it can help small businesses reach the online retailer’s vast audience in a variety of ways.

If you’re an existing seller:

• Sponsored products
• Sponsored brands
• Sponsored display ads
• Stores

If you don’t sell directly on the platform:

• Display ads
• Video ads

The infographic breaks down what each ad product looks like and summarize some tips for getting started with your first campaign.

Ad products for existing Amazon sellers

There are roughly one million small businesses currently selling on Amazon. That’s a lot of competition, which is why it’s important for businesses to understand the different ad formats available on the platform and what they’re used for.

Sponsored Product Ads: These ads appear in the search results and product detail pages within Amazon. Advertisers pay on a per-click basis, thus there are no up-front fees required. Sponsored product ads are a good fit for sellers, vendors, and kindle authors who want to promote their merchandise/books.

Example of a sponsored product placement on Amazon—Source: Businessfinancing.co.uk

Sponsored Brand Ads: Brand ads appear on Amazon product pages or within the landing page of your store and are triggered by relevant searches. As with sponsored ads, there are no monthly fees associated with brand ads. Advertisers pay only when a user clicks on the ad.

Example of an Amazon sponsored display placement—Source: Businessfinancing.co.uk

Amazon Stores: An Amazon Store is free to create and acts as a hub where all your products are listed in one place. Stores are suitable for sellers, vendors and agencies. Stores are great to aid with product discovery and branding. They can be designed without any coding using predesigned templates provided by Amazon. Stores are available to sellers enrolled in the Amazon Brand Registry, vendors, and agencies and you do not need to advertise on Amazon to create a store.

Example of an Amazon Store—source: Amazon

What if you’re not an amazon seller?

You can still advertise on Amazon and its associated properties if you’re not currently a seller or vendor on the platform. It offers two ad formats—display ads and video ads—which business can leverage to promote their brand, products, and services.

Display Ads: Display ads (not to be confused with “sponsored display ads) can appear on Amazon, websites operated by them, apps and third-party sites. Display ads can be purchased using their self-service demand-side platform (DSP) or via managed-service option which requires a minimum spend of $35,000. Display ads are priced on a cost-per-thousand (CPM) basis.

Display ads enable businesses to show ads both on and off Amazon, including within apps. When someone clicks on the ad, they can be directed to the product page, your store page, a custom landing page on Amazon.com or an external website.

Video Ads: As with display ads, video ads can link to a product page, external website or landing page. Amazon video ads appear on its owned websites such as IMDb and devices including Fire TV. Video ad pricing varies based on ad format and placement

Example of display and video ads available for non-sellers—Source: Businessfinancing.co.uk

Seven steps to launching your campaign

The infographic outlines—and helps to visualize—a seven-step approach to getting your ads up and running on Amazon quickly.

1. Pick a descriptive campaign name
2. Decide on a monthly ad budget
3. Set an end date for your campaign
4. Choose “automatic targeting” so Amazon can generate keyword and product matches automatically based on user searches
5. Select one product per campaign
6. Select your keywords
7. Understand the available bidding strategies, then choose the one that’s right for you

Amazon offers three bid strategies for advertisers as shown above— Source: Businessfinancing.co.uk

Amazon provides step-by-step instructions (as well as $50 in free clicks) for sellers who want to get started with advertising on the platform. Their advertising page provides all the relevant details.

Create maximum impact with campaign optimization and monitoring

Once your campaign is launched, you should immediately begin to monitor and optimize its performance. The infographic lists several techniques that small businesses can use to help their ads stand out and perform well including adding negative keywords to ensure your ad isn’t triggered for irrelevant searches (e.g., if you sell dog food, you don’t want your ad to show for someone searching for “cat food.”)

Other tips focus on the type of language to include (and not to include) in your ad copy and the best way to leverage different ad types so that they work together (e.g., by keeping display ads running at all times).

The full infographic is available for free on Businessfinancing.co.uk’s website and contains much more detail than is profiled here.

The post Everything small businesses need to know to launch a campaign on Amazon appeared first on Search Engine Watch.

Source:: searchenginewatch.com

No matter how much you already know, in 2020’s always-on B2B marketing landscape there’s always more to learn.

That’s why savvy B2B marketers are continually seeking out new methods and research, and refining and honing their existing skills.

Whether it’s influencer marketing, conversion optimization, or search engine optimization (SEO), with more options available for learning new marketing skills today than ever before, choosing where to start can sometimes seem overwhelming.

Online courses have proven to be an excellent way to enhance your career through learning, and by offering a work-at-your-own-pace cadence, you can fit in as much or as little instruction as your time allows, whenever and wherever you want.

With more than 70 percent of companies recognizing online learning as essential to long-term strategy (Digital Marketing Institute), it’s little wonder that in 2020 online courses are flourishing.

[bctt tweet=““Learn everything. Later you will see that nothing is superfluous.” — Hugh of Saint-Victor“ username=“toprank“]

To sharpen your B2B marketing skills, we’ve picked out five organizations offering a wide variety of online courses for boosting your marketing skills, and as with our previous popular list of „10 Free Online Courses to Optimize Your Marketing Skills,“ each is either entirely free or offers a free trial to try out content.

Let’s start digging in.

via GIPHY

Course 1: Harvard University’s Causal Diagrams — Draw Your Assumptions Before Your Conclusions

Harvard University offers a free course of interest to B2B marketers, designers, and more in its universally-relevant „Causal Diagrams: Draw Your Assumptions Before Your Conclusions,“ a nine-week course exploring methods to cleverly turn expert knowledge into everyday diagrams, and more.

Harvard also offers a surprising selection of additional free online courses, including 14 relating to data science and five in the computer science category.

[bctt tweet=“Best practices in marketing evolve faster than mutant DNA. Don’t rely on the same old messages in the same few channels and expect your audience to respond with enthusiasm. @NiteWrites“ username=“toprank“]

Course 2: edX’s Marketing Analytics: Competitive Analysis and Market Segmentation

The popular edX massive open online course (MOOC) organization, begun in 2012 by MIT and Harvard, offers „Marketing Analytics: Competitive Analysis and Market Segmentation,“ a free four-week online course in competitive analysis and market segmentation, also exploring how to analyze and structure markets.

Additionally, through a wide array of educational institutions, edX offers an impressive number of free online courses of interest to B2B marketers, such as „Market Segmentation Analysis,“ „Strategic Social Media Marketing,“ and many others.

[bctt tweet=““To know that we know what we know, and to know that we do not know what we do not know, that is true knowledge.” — Copernicus“ username=“toprank“]

Course 3: The University of California’s Writing for Social Media

Operating since 2012, BerkeleyX is the University of California at Berkeley’s program of free online learning resources, including „Writing for Social Media,“ with its business-focused look at accurately assessing your audience, relevant content customization, and the importance of telling your brand’s story.

Berkeley, which also utilizes the edX platform, also offers the following marketing and technology related courses:

• Blockchain Technology
• Marketing Analytics: Marketing Measurement Strategy
• Bitcoin and Cryptocurrencies

[bctt tweet=“Buyers desperately want to trust. And we can give them trust with relevant B2B content that features credible voices. – @LeeOdden “ username=“toprank“]

Course 4: University of Pennsylvania’s Viral Marketing and How to Craft Contagious Content

The University of Pennsylvania’s robust Penn Online Learning Initiative offers up a healthy dose of free online courses for marketers looking to expand or augment their repertoires, including a course dedicated to exploring „Viral Marketing and How to Craft Contagious Content,“ delivered through another popular digital education platform, Coursera, and taught by The Wharton School’s noted marketing professor Jonah Berger.

[bctt tweet=““Virality isn’t born, it’s made.” — Jonah Berger“ username=“toprank“]

Course 5: University of Colorado’s Digital Advertising Strategy Specialization

The University of Colorado offers over 130 MOOCs covering more than 25 specialized departments, including this three-month course exploring „Digital Advertising Strategy Specialization,“ covering search advertising, social media and native ads, and other aspects of digital advertising.

Additional free online courses of interest to digital marketers offered by the University of Colorado include:

• Teamwork Skills: Communicating Effectively in Groups
• Advanced Business Analytics Specialization
• Effective Communication: Writing, Design, and Presentation Specialization

[bctt tweet=“Working with influencers to co-create content delivers mutual value. When that content is interactive, it creates an experience that is more engaging and inspires action. @AmishaGandhi“ username=“toprank“]

Keep Growing Your B2B Marketing Skills With Free Online Courses

via GIPHY

B2B marketers who focus on making learning a lifelong endeavor gain an advantage in future-proofing the work they do today, and by growing your current skills and widening your marketing repertoire with new knowledge, whether you’re a CMO or chief executive you’re bound to see newfound success.

We hope the insight you gain from taking any or all of these five online course offerings — or others offered by these organizations — will help to make your 2020 a banner year for your B2B marketing and content marketing campaigns.

As a parting bonus list, here are three additional resources to help you expand your marketing knowledge:

• SEO is Not Enough: Why B2B Marketers Need to Optimize for Trust with Influence
• 10 Tips From Influencer Marketing’s Hidden 1,000-Year History
• 5 Old Habits B2B Marketers Should Leave Behind in the 2010s
• 10 Years of Women Who Rock in Marketing – CMO Edition 2019
• How to Build a Binge-Worthy and Rewarding B2B Content Strategy

The post 5 Free Online Courses to Sharpen Your B2B Marketing Skills appeared first on Online Marketing Blog – TopRank®.

Source:: toprankblog.com

Anchor text variation is one of the best ways to tell Google what a specific web page is about. It is used to help readers find more information about a topic and also factors into ranking your web pages. While it is a great tool, it can be the downfall of your SEO efforts if not used correctly.

Many people have tried (and are still trying) to manipulate search results. One way to do this is to link from specific anchor text in an attempt to rank for the specific word or phrase. Unfortunately for these folks but fortunately for those of us doing it right, we are no longer in the olden days of SEO and these types of black-hat techniques no longer work. In fact, they are likely to get you penalized.

One of the best ways to stay out of a penalty is by practicing link diversity. There are many ways to do this – you could try linking from various domain extensions, different domain authorities, and using a mixture of “follow” and “nofollow” links. For the sake of this article, however, I want to focus specifically on varying anchor text.

Why vary your anchor text?

Because. Google…

That’s the simple answer, but let’s go a little more in-depth. Google looks at your link profile when deciding how to rank your web pages. Part of your link profile involves the anchor text used to link to your website.

Source: SparkToro

So, you should have specific anchor text that talks about your web pages, right? Well, sort of.

Using specific anchor text is fine, but when you start to use the same anchor text, Google will get suspicious. It will make your backlink profile look unnatural and likely lead to lower search rankings, if not a Google penalty.

When linking to your website, you need to vary the anchor text. Natural links will come from various anchor texts as webmasters link differently. There is no way all websites got together and decided to link to your website from the exact same anchor text. Google knows this, which is why you will be going down the road of a Google penalty if you don’t incorporate diversity.

Using long-tail in your anchor text variations

So, how do you choose anchor text variations? There are many ways to do this, but I will show you some that will keep the meaning of your anchor text to best help with SEO. The first is mixing in long-tail keywords with your exact match anchor text.

Example

Let’s use the keyword phrase “anchor text” as our example. Instead of linking from that exact phrase, use the following long-tail variations:

• “using variations of anchor text in your backlink profile”
• “how to vary your anchor text for better link diversity”
• “how anchor text variations matter in your link profile”

I just made those up, but you can see how we use the exact match keyword within a long-tail anchor text. Google will still see the main anchor text and take that into account, but you also have a variation so as to show a natural link profile (and not artificial link building).

Using LSI Keywords

The above examples I just made up on the fly, but you can get more technical if you want to vary your anchor text and ensure you keep the meaning of the term you are trying to rank for. What do I mean by that?

Sometimes people simply choose anchor text variations that they think are similar. While they may be similar in wording, they may not be similar in meaning. And yes, it makes a difference. The term “anchor text variation” and “exact match anchor text” contain the same keyword, but they will return very different results when you search Google.

Source: Google Search

That is where LSI keywords come into play. LSI stands for latent semantic indexing and is a term used to describe keywords that Google feels are similar to each other. And hey, if Google says they are similar, then they are (since Google is the one who determines where they rank).

You can find LSI keywords in a number of ways. Use an online LSI keyword generator or go to your Google AdWords account and search for specific keyword variations in your ad campaign. You can also simply Google your main term and then look at the bottom of the page for similar searches suggested by Google.

Using the last suggestion mentioned above, I found the following LSI keywords for “anchor text variation”:

• “how to create anchor text”
• “anchor text best practices”
• “anchor text generator”

This means you can use all three of these to link to the same webpage and Google will see them as the same or similar, without penalizing you for using the “exact” same anchor text. Make sense?

Final word on anchor text variation

There are a number of techniques and strategies available to you when it comes to SEO, but building a diverse link profile is one of the highest impacts. Even within the context of diversifying your anchor text, there are multiple strategies, as you can see. For example, you can add advice such as isolating your current anchor text structure to ensure it is diverse. Without going too far and adding a layer of confusion, however, I think you get the main point which is you must vary your anchor text. By doing so you are creating a diverse link profile that will show Google your links are coming naturally, and you aren’t involved in any link building schemes.

What variations have you used for anchor text diversity?

Anthony Gaenzle is the Founder of AnthonyGaenzle.com a marketing and business blog. He also serves as the Head of Marketing and Business Development at Granite Creative Group, a full-service marketing firm.

The post Anchor text variations: Your key to link profile diversity appeared first on Search Engine Watch.

Source:: searchenginewatch.com