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      Best Practices for SEO, SEM and LinkedIn

      Follow these best practices to lay the groundwork for your site to increase its visibility in search

      SEM:

      Google Ads Keyword Match Types:

      There are four keyword match types available. Using the wrong one can limit lead volume or waste a lot of money. Broad Match Modified and Phrase Match are the best ones to use:

        • Broad Match: keyword phrase
          • DO NOT USE. Bids on any search even closely associated with the keyword bid on. For phrase keywords, will bid on any word in the phrase
      • Broad Match Modified: +keyword +phrase
          • Bids on any search with the exact keyword in it. For phrase keywords, will bid on any search that uses all of the words in the phrase in any order. Useful for discovering opportunities
      • Phrase Match: “keyword phrase”
      • Bids on any search with the exact phrase in it. Great for capturing a variety of searches and discovering opportunities
      • Exact Match: [keyword phrase]
      • Bids on the specified keyword or phrase only. Limited utility for B2B. Great if you have a winning keyword you really want to focus on

      Google Ads Quality Score:

      Quality Score is Google’s way of scoring your campaign. It is based on 3 factors: Ad Relevance, Landing Page Experience, and Expected CTR

      Higher scores mean lower CPCs and more impressions. A quality score of at least 3 is needed for the keyword to not be throttled by the platform

      How to improve “Below Average” scores for each factor:

      • Ad Relevance: Add the keywords being bid on to the ad. Additional ad groups may be needed

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      Google Ads Audiences:

      In addition to Keywords, Google allows some audience- and demographic-based targeting and bidding

      • Audiences
        There are two audience targeting modes:
        • Observation: audiences are monitored but not targeted. Allows you to collect data on an audience to see how it will perform
        • Targeting: limits bids only to those audiences
      • Additionally, there is also the option to exclude audiences. For B2B, it is generally helpful to exclude college students and people looking for work

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      Google Ads Demographic Options:

      Google’s demographic targeting options include age, gender, and household income

        • Age:  Upper and lower age groups are safe to exclude for B2B since people that are more likely than not to be in the right role
      • Gender: Best left alone unless the product/offer is gender-specific
      • Household Income: Lower income brackets can be excluded for B2B as people with purchasing responsibility typically make more money


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      Google Ads General Tips:

      LINKEDIN ADS:

      LinkedIn Campaign Setup:

      • The biggest advantage of LinkedIn as a B2B ad platform are its audience targeting options
      • The more precise the audience, the better the results are likely to be. If you have precise sales targeting data, it is a great starting point
      • Audiences
        • If possible, use an audience that uses Job Titles and Company Industry or Company Name. This will narrow the audience
        • Job Seniority can be used in place of Job Title for industries where titles vary significantly
        • With audiences that DO NOT use Job Titles, be sure to exclude “sales” and “marketing” under Member Function
      • Bidding
        • It is better to use manual bidding since you get more control over costs
        • Start at the lowest bid LinkedIn will allow you to use then gradually increase until spend reaches the daily budget

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      LinkedIn Leadgen Ads & HubSpot:

      • When creating LinkedIn leadgen ads, a workflow needs to be set up for the associated automation using the form as a trigger
        • Landing page and form-based automation does not work
      • These forms will show up as triggers in workflows but will not be found in the Forms section
        • Lead Ad: Form Name
      • The form WILL NOT appear in Hubspot until it is completed at least once. This can be done by testing the form. To test, preview the form in a draft ad and submit as yourself. The contact should appear in hubspot shortly after
      • Because many people on LinkedIn use a personal email for their account instead of a business one, DO NOT exclude gmail/outlook/yahoo emails when running these campaigns

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      LinkedIn Additional Tips:

      SEO:

      Site Pages:

      The homepage and site pages are the best opportunity to rank for heart-of-market keywords for your company and product. Not setting these up properly is a lost opportunity

      • Titles and Metas: Every site page needs a unique title and written around a specific keyword. For the homepage in particular, this positions the entire site and helps other pages rank
          • For pages other than the homepage, the URL should be short but clear, with the fewest number possible of layers (/) and dashes
      • Targeted H1 and H2 tags: H1 tags for a page should be related to its title, with H2s being relevant longer-tail variants

      Page Speed Testing:

      • Page Speed: Page speed is extremely important to Google. To see how Google thinks a page performs, open an incognito Chrome window, go to the desired page, and right-click “inspect”. In the inspect menu, click on the >> and select Lighthouse. Then run the app from the prompt.

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