A robust email list could be an ecommerce business’s best investment. Depending on the survey, email marketing returns as much as $40 for every $1 invested in 2024. The challenge is acquiring and retaining subscribers.

Fortunately, a simple change in perspective can unlock growth.

Many merchants offer a discount — typically 10 to 15% — to encourage signups but then engage subscribers solely with more deals and offers. The merchants train subscribers to buy only when items are on sale.

What would happen if those merchants — retailers, wholesalers, direct-to-consumer brands — approached email marketing like social media?

Content Marketing

Editorial emails are a content marketing tactic for attracting, engaging, and retaining customers. Including tips, instructions, and recommendations expands email from promotional to informative, giving prospects new reasons to subscribe, engage, and buy.

The process is similar to social media marketing and goes something like this:

• Create a compelling and product-relevant editorial newsletter.
• Attract subscribers.
• Include products in each newsletter.
• Optimize for sales.

Content

Step one is to create compelling content related to the products your business sells.

Take Masterbuilt as an example. The company’s products are grills and smokers. Its content and social media marketing focus on recipes — the product and the content work together.

Masterbuild would require little additional effort to produce a grilling newsletter. It could bundle several of its recipes into a weekly round-up.

The approach is a proven winner. Consider these five recipe newsletters and their reported email subscriber counts in March 2024.

Subscribers

The next step is to attract subscribers. Social media algorithms show posts to like-minded users who might follow your business.

But many social media marketers also boost those posts via advertising. Something similar exists for editorial newsletters. Let’s consider four subscriber growth drivers.

Organic recommendations. Substack, which blends editorial newsletters with social media features, was among the first to offer organic recommendations. When someone subscribes to an editorial newsletter, the platform suggests others.

For example, “The Real Heroes of Ecommerce” is a newsletter on Substack from marketer Jason Shepherd. Subscribing to that newsletter produces Shepard’s recommendation of “The Human Voice.”

Paid recommendations. Newsletter publishers can acquire subscribers for about $3 each via Sparkloop, ReferralHero, and others. Recommendations are available only for editorial newsletters, not marketing.

Paid growth. Several newsletter growth businesses have emerged. These agencies — Email Crush, Paperboy Studios, GrowthLetter — place ads in various channels to attract subscribers.

Blog and forms. Let’s not forget your company’s blog and web forms. Double down on promoting newsletters.

Include Products

An editorial email must be worth reading. Don’t skimp on this part. And don’t forget to include products, as follows.

Treat products like sponsors. Editorial newsletters frequently have sponsors. No rule prevents a sponsor from being a company’s own offerings.

Make it a recommendation. Many editorial newsletters recommend products after the main content. Think of these as text ads for your products.

Treat them as editorial. Masterbuilt could publish a weekly editorial newsletter featuring three recipes, an interview with a barbeque pro, and a tip for using the company’s “Autoignite” system. This mention could push a subscriber to place an order.

In each example, set up tracking to attribute sales.

Optimize for Sales

The last step is to optimize the editorial newsletter to produce the most revenue.

• Measure the newsletter’s sales performance.
• Segment subscribers to the products they are likely to purchase.
• Monitor subscriber sources. Focus on folks who subscribed via an organic recommendation if they produce the most sales.

Internal linking is crucial for search engine optimization. It helps Google discover all pages on a site and assign value to each. The more links to a page, the more important it is.

A site’s structure impacts internal links. Examples include navigation, footer links, “related articles,” and “related products.”

However, the most impactful links are “contextual” because Google looks at the surrounding context to assign relevancy signals. A link in the body of this article is contextual.

Contextual links are hard to scale, especially for sites with thousands of pages, but AI technology can help. AI can spot phrase variations and synonyms to identify relevant pages for contextual links.

Here are three AI-powered internal linking tools.

LinkWhisper

LinkWhisper is a WordPress plugin and Shopify app that analyzes contextual links (internal and external), identifies pages with zero or too few inbound links, and suggests where to add links. The tool focuses on contextual links only, ignoring those in navigation, widgets, and sidebars.

The report is also helpful for identifying broken and orphaned pages — those with no inbound internal links (accessible via external links or sitemaps).

LinkWhisper suggests relevant internal links while a user writes in the WordPress editor. It’s a handy reminder. The tool can additionally recommend internal links to a list of pages.

Pricing for LinkWhisper starts at $97 for a one-time WordPress license or $7 per month for the Shopify app with a 7-day trial.

LinkActions

LinkActions connects to Search Console to analyze a site’s structure and provide internal linking suggestions. It can also add internal links automatically. Just paste the LinkActions code snippet in your site’s header and enable internal link insertions.

Pricing for LinkActions starts at $64 per month for up to three sites and 1,500 pages. The free trial includes a limited report with no automation.

LinkStorm

LinkStorm crawls a site and reveals:

• Immediate internal linking opportunities based on the content,
• Additional copy for each article to increase linking opportunities based on the semantic similarity of the two posts.

It also cites the optimal number of internal links for each page and shows where to place a link on the page and the preferred anchor. It does not automatically add the link, however.

LinkStorm costs $30 per month for 1,000 pages across unlimited sites. A free trial is available.

Data-driven customer segments enable brands to personalize marketing campaigns, improving engagement and conversions.

Yet first-party data remains an underutilized marketing asset of ecommerce companies. Most focus their promotional efforts on email, SMS, and even direct mail, missing the opportunity to use their data in advertising.

My company manages paid media for big and small companies. We see performance lifts of 25% or more from targeted segments versus a broader audience.

Here are 10 segments to jumpstart your ecommerce ad performance.

Ecommerce Ad Segments

The larger the customer list, the more complex the segmentation. The number of segments depends on the company, the budget, and available creative messaging.

All customers

Start with the broadest audience: all purchasers. Remarket to them with product launches or sales, and exclude this segment from customer acquisition campaigns.

Top customers

Repeat customers make or break most ecommerce businesses. Creating a top customer segment — e.g., frequency of purchases, the time between purchases, total value — helps focus on those essential buyers.

Sale and non-sale purchasers

Sale purchasers are prospects for flash promotions and discount campaigns. Excluding non-sale purchasers helps maintain their full-price purchasing behaviors.

Gift purchasers

A checkout flow should include the option of marking the purchase as a “gift” or adding a gift message. It improves the customer experience and facilitates a gift purchaser segment. That audience becomes valuable during gifting holidays such as Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, and the Q4 season.

Category purchasers

Category segments enable new-product campaigns and cross-sells. A customer who purchases from Category A is likely interested in those new or related products. Create messaging and campaigns to capitalize on that preference.

Unengaged purchasers

Lapsed or unengaged customers are another worthwhile segment. Use paid media to re-engage these buyers and reach them through a channel other than your own email solicitations.

Peak-season buyers

Brands with peak selling seasons beyond Q4 should create segments of customers who purchased during those periods. Timely targeting of those buyers often produces high ROAS.

Q4 customers

Most consumer brands depend on Q4 sales. Create a segment dedicated to those customers and message appropriately to maximize your impact.

Likely to purchase within x days

Predictive platforms such as Klaviyo, Bloomreach, and others can identify buyers who are “likely to purchase.” Create this segment and test various timeframes to avoid advertising to customers who would have purchased anyway.

Likely to have high AOV

Predictive platforms can also anticipate “high average order value” buyers. These segments can be lucrative and are worth testing.

Getting Started

To start, download customer segment lists from your ecommerce platform and upload them to Meta, Google, or other ad channels. Email addresses are required, and first name, last name, country, and postal code are helpful. Some platforms sync directly to ad channels. Klaviyo, for example, integrates with Meta and Google.

Next, activate campaigns that target these customers. In my experience, brands with extensive customer lists do not require look-a-like campaigns. With enough data, ad platforms can target broad-reach audiences as well or better.

Customize ad creative and messaging to the segment. If you’re trying to reach gift purchasers, for example, consider ads showcasing common gift products with dynamic gifting prices.

Google released this month updates to its core algorithm and spam policies. It also issued widespread manual penalties to sites with excessive AI-generated and low-grade content.

Google is prioritizing spam — manually and algorithmically. If you’ve experienced a decline in rankings but no manual actions, audit your content for potential spam violations.

Here’s where to start.

Scaled Content

“Scaled content” refers to expanding articles rapidly via automation or AI. Google has advised against scaling for years. It has now provided example violations:

• Using generative AI to create content.
• Scraping content — e.g., from RSS feeds, search results —  and publishing it without changes.
• Combining content from many sources and republishing it without alteration.

To my knowledge, Google has not to date expressly disallowed AI content, but including it now as “scaled” implies excessive use should be avoided.

Expired Domains

Domains become available when their owners forget or neglect to renew them. In many cases, expired domains retain link authority, prompting some search optimizers to buy them and then publish new (vaguely relevant) content or 301-redirecting the domain to a third-party site.

Google now includes such expired-domain tactics as spam, but its examples are extreme:

• Affiliate content placed on previous government-owned content.
• Medical products sold from expired domains of non-profit organizations.
• Casino websites hosted on domains previously owned by schools.

Apparently Google is targeting aggressive cases, but it may eventually include common uses.

Parasite SEO

“Parasite SEO” involves placing low-quality content on a trusted domain. Google calls this “site reputation abuse.”

Google’s examples mainly include content unrelated to the domain, such as:

• An educational site hosting a page for payday loans.
• A news site hosting automated coupons.

The guidelines also emphasize a lack of editorial oversight and include scenarios not considered spam:

• Press release sites.
• News publications with syndicated content from other quality publications.
• Sites with user-generated content, such as a forum or comment sections.
• Native or third-party ads, sponsored content, or appropriately tagged affiliate links for monetization, not rankings.
• Manually selected coupons.

Unaware?

Most businesses have never participated in these tactics, but some may have done so unknowingly through external consultants. Keep an eye on Search Console notifications and organic traffic.

Transcribing audio and video files was once tedious and time-consuming. No more. With AI, the process is near-instant.

Many transcription services offer automated versions. Here are three AI-powered tools with my impressions of each.

Audio Writer

Audio Writer is an OpenAI-powered app for iOS and macOS. I tested it on my iPhone. Users speak into the app or enable access to audio files.

To start, install the app and provide your own OpenAI API key. The app takes just seconds to process and refine a file. From there, users can:

• Rewrite a transcription using an available style: “Simple and Clear,” “Kid-friendly,” “Descriptive,” and “Conversational.”
• Convert the text into a tweet, direct message, formal or casual email, or bulleted list.
• Connect with custom ChatGPT prompts to create specialized transcripts.

Allowing users to speak the audio rather than first recording it saves a lot of time.

Audio Writer’s iOS app costs $15 one time for unlimited access. A free test is available. A paid subscription to OpenAI’s API is required for ongoing use.

Notta

Notta is a transcription service to create notes from live or archived video and audio meetings. Notta’s transcriptions include auto-correction, timestamps, summaries, and action items. The language translation feature is handy for international teams.

Users and team members can edit and add notes to any transcript.

Notta supports Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, and more. It also integrates with Outlook and Google Calendar.

Notta’s free monthly tier provides 120 minutes of transcriptions. Paid plans start at $13.99 per month.

Trint

Trint transcribes and translates audio and video in multiple languages with captions and timestamps (chapters). Users can combine transcripts into a single article or tutorial, add comments, highlight important moments, and more.

Trent allows file editing and collaboration and can repurpose a transcript into social media posts.

Pricing for Trint starts at $80 per month with a free 7-day full-feature trial.

Andrew Faris once managed huge Meta ad budgets while CEO of ecommerce brands. He still manages huge budgets, but now at his agency on behalf of clients. I asked him for pointers on advertising bread-and-butter commodity-type products.

“Directness is the answer,” he told me. “The more tightly you communicate your product and what it does, the better.”

This is Faris’s third appearance on the podcast. In 2022 we discussed his career transition, having left the CEO role. Last year we addressed his new agency and its focus on Meta Ads management. This interview continues with Meta advertising — testing, tactics, creative, and more.

The entire audio of our conversation is embedded below. The transcript is edited for clarity and length.

Eric Bandholz: Give our listeners a recap of what you do.

Andrew Faris: I run a boutique marketing agency called AJF Growth. It’s me, a couple of folks in the U.S., and a few in the Philippines. We work together to grow ecommerce brands, primarily using Meta Ads. I offer strategic guidance to a small list of clients.

My “Andrew Faris Podcast” addresses what I’m seeing and learning. That includes the stuff I’ve experienced as a media buyer on the brand side. I started in ecommerce about 10 years ago.

Bandholz: Let’s talk about the episode I did on your podcast a few weeks ago.

Faris: You came to me with the idea of a series of episodes of brands willing to discuss their business, the wins and losses, with a high level of transparency, similar to your discussions about Beardbrand. You told me that Beardbrand was buying more Meta Ads. I didn’t have space for another client, but I suggested we do a coaching call to work through your ad account. I would provide my honest take if you share honest information. We’ll record it and broadcast it to my podcast listeners. It was the second “Opening the Books” episode I’ve done. I’m trying to do more.

Bandholz: We started with some media buying rules.

Faris: I use a volleyball analogy to describe advertising. Media buying is the setter, and creative is the hitter — the spike. The set matters a lot. Putting the ball in the right place will make the hitter’s job much easier. You need both, but creative scores the point.

Many brands set their Meta Ads poorly. They’re mainly launching creative tests, putting tons of money behind them, and then trying to pick the winners and scale from there.

That sounds intuitive, except for two things. The first is that brands consistently underestimate the cost of those tests. Testing the creative is probably the single biggest ad cost in many direct-to-consumer businesses.

Second, humans are terrible at objectively analyzing data. This applies to me as well. I have 10 years of experience running Meta Ads for brands. I’ve done it across every category, yet I am horrible at analyzing a dataset, picking the winner, and scaling it. The beautiful thing is that Meta Ads will do this for us via its machine learning.

Bandholz: What ads work?

Faris: Meta suppresses your losers and scales the winners. It eliminates having to test ads. That means running lots of unique ads as long as the production cost is low. The first thing I do for any Meta account is review and relaunch the backlog of creatives. I grab the ads and turn them back on with a bid cap.

Meta will only spend if it expects the click-through and conversion rates to net a cost per acquisition within your target. I like to repurpose a client’s organic social content — as long as it references a product with no licensing issues — and launch it as an ad. Even if it underperformed organically, launch it in a bid cap and see what happens. It’s low production cost with potentially high impact. Again, humans are bad at predicting ad performance. The more we think an ad sucks, the more likely it’s going to be awesome.

Bandholz: Most products are commodities, more or less, with much competition. How do those merchants stand out?

Faris: I recently talked with the owner of Jones Road Beauty, the cosmetics provider. He described a concept called the unique mechanism. Sellers of products with many competitors must hone in on what makes theirs unique.

The example he gave was P90X, the at-home workout system. There are a slew of companies selling at-home workouts. The unique mechanism of P90X was “muscle confusion.” That phrase in ads was powerful. Accomplishing muscle confusion in your workout program builds strength and improves body tone.

How do advertisers focus on the unique benefits? Directness is the answer. The more tightly you communicate your product and what it does, the better. Be clear. Keep your message core to what people seek.

Bandholz: Where can people follow you and check out the episode?

Faris: Go to AJFgrowth.com for info on the agency. Find the Beardbrand episode in any podcast directory. I’m @andrewjfaris on X.

Gmail and Yahoo are adding new requirements this year for email senders in an effort to reduce unwanted messages. For recipients, it’s a blessing. For ecommerce businesses, a critical marketing channel may be in jeopardy.

To assess the impact, we must first understand “deliverability.”

Deliverability

Deliverability is the degree to which an email reaches recipients.

Good deliverability means messages arrive in subscribers’ inboxes. Subscribers may not open them but will see you sent them.

Messages with poor deliverability are marked as promotional and filtered to an alternate inbox or tab (such as “Promotions” in Gmail), sent to spam, or potentially blocked entirely.

Without deliverability, it doesn’t matter how well-written and designed emails are. You could have the best products and offers, and nobody will see them.

What influences deliverability? Let’s dive into that.

Domain Consistency

A sender’s domain appears in three places:

• In the “From” address (e.g., [email protected]),
• In the “Reply-to” address,
• The sending domain.

Your email service provider typically assigns a sending domain. It’s an alias of sorts, as the actual sender is the provider, not your company. However, providers (e.g., Mailchimp, Klaviyo, many more) allow clients to use sending domains that match From and Reply-to addresses.

Ensure your domain is consistent in the three places, and you’ll be in good shape.

Authentication

A recipient’s email provider must know the sender is not an imposter.

Setting up SPF, DKIM, and DMARC records at the sender’s domain registrar passes this basic deliverability test. Without authentication, recipients’ providers are much more likely to block marketing emails.

Most email providers offer tools and guides to streamline or entirely configure SPF, DKIM, and DMARC settings.

Reputation

Someone who registers a domain and immediately sends 10,000 emails is not likely trustworthy. Neither is a domain with 50% of past emails marked as spam or sent to expired or invalid addresses.

Conversely, a well-established sending domain with few spam complaints and consistent email engagement likely has a good reputation.

A domain’s sending reputation is critical for inbox delivery. Multiple services offer reputation monitoring. The best place to start is Google Postmaster Tools, which is free.

Building a good reputation includes:

• Only sending to people who sign up,
• Never buying email addresses,
• Sending good, relevant content,
• Removing lapsed subscribers and invalid addresses,
• Using a list cleaning service such as Neverbounce or AtData to detect bad addresses.

Content

The final component of deliverability is the most obvious: send accurate, clean, and relevant content. Say an apparel store sends subscribers emails about Lego sets. That would annoy and confuse a lot of recipients and deserve a poor reputation.

Loading up an email with excessive images and exaggerations — “win big,” “millions,” “lottery,” “gold” — can flag an email as spam.

Some of this is intuitive. Take excessive images, for example. The emails of many ecommerce brands are clipped and cannot be easily read owing to so many product photos and links.

Using Glockapps, my favorite deliverability testing tool, I’ve checked the same message with more versus fewer images. I consistently achieve better deliverability results with fewer images. Studies from HubSpot show the same thing.

Definitely use images in your marketing emails. Just don’t overdo it — use mostly text.

Delivery KPIs

Inform “good” or “bad” delivery with these key performance indicators:

• Open rate. The number of recipients who open an email divided by the number of emails delivered. Some email apps (such as Apple’s iOS) mark all messages as open for privacy reasons. Nonetheless, shoot for at least a 20% open rate for ecommerce campaigns.

• Click rate. The number of recipients who click in an email divided by the number of emails delivered — ignoring clicks to unsubscribe and “view in browser” links. Aim for a click rate of at least 1%.

• Bounce rate. The number of emails immediately returned (typically due to invalid or blocked addresses) divided by the total emails delivered. Keep this KPI below 1%.

• Unsubscribe rate. The number of recipients who click the unsubscribe link divided by the number of emails delivered. Keep it below 0.5%.

• Spam rate. The number of recipients who click the spam link divided by the number of emails delivered. Spam is perhaps the most critical KPI. If the number is 0.3% or higher, deliverability and reputation will suffer. Aim for 0.05% or less.

My ecommerce business sells downloadable music software. In 2023 we sent 7.9 million marketing and automation emails, with these KPIs:

• 42% open rate,
• 1.28% click rate for marketing; 3.43% for automation,
• 0.43% bounce rate,
• 0.27% unsubscribe rate,
• 0.005% spam rate.

Prioritize your business’s email deliverability and achieve results as good or better.

Google hires thousands of personnel to view and evaluate web pages that rank in organic search. A key metric for those human quality raters is “Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness.” Google emphasizes pages that demonstrate those qualities.

What’s unclear, however, is how Google integrates EEAT into its algorithm. Google executives have shared conflicting views.

In 2022, Google’s vice president of search, Hyung-Jin Kim, stated that EAT was a “core part.” (Google originally coined the metric as “Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness.” In December 2022, it added “Experience,” morphing “EAT” to “EEAT.”)

In 2024, Google’s search liaison, Danny Sullivan, tweeted it had never been a ranking factor.

Google’s “Search Central Blog” states:

Search raters have no control over how pages rank. Rater data is not used directly in our ranking algorithms. Rather, we use them as a restaurant might get feedback cards from diners. The feedback helps us know if our systems seem to be working.

Hence, EEAT is for Google’s quality control. But it’s also for creators. The blog post adds, “… the guidelines may help you self-assess how your content is doing from an E-E-A-T perspective, improvements to consider… .”

The bottom line is Google wants to rank web pages with strong EEAT. The guidelines (PDF) include:

• Expertise of the author. Add details such as work history.

• Research methods. Explain how the content was created. For example, for product reviews, state how many you tested and how.

• Purpose. Address the rationale for publishing the content. It’s a vague suggestion, although it reinforces the goal of helping humans, not search engines. Potential reasons might include client interactions, outside commentary, new data, and more.

EEAT applies to informational content, not product or category pages. Moreover, Google scrutinizes content that impacts “the health, financial stability, or safety of people, or the welfare or well-being of society.” Google calls such content “Your Money or Your Life” — YMYL.

Google tells its raters that YMYL pages require much expertise and authority. So if you publish financial or health advice, closely follow the guidelines.

EEAT in Brief

Here’s my interpretation of EEAT in practice. The underlying principles existed long before the acronym. Many are more or less common sense: Ensure your content is trustworthy, thorough, authentic, and helpful to humans.

Content Type	EEAT Inclusions
Health topics	Detailed author info to demonstrate expertise. Include citations in the content to (i) professional research, (ii) opinions of doctors and scientists, and (iii) reputable publications.
Financial or legal advice	Detailed author info to demonstrate expertise. Include citations in the content to (i) opinions of accountants and lawyers, (ii) professional organizations, and (iii) reputable publications.
News reporting	Accurate factual information; expertise of experienced journalists; quotations from experts on the topic.
Legislation, public policy, societal concerns	Official government sources; reputable media sources; trusted and varied opinions; independent research.
News or advice related to children	Views and recommendations of professionals (doctors, educators, counselors); professional publications and organizations; independent research.
Product reviews.	The writer’s first-hand experience, including the number of products tested and the process and timeframe.

Google Ads has invested heavily in video. Recent examples include new YouTube advertising formats and Performance Max video campaigns. Video isn’t solely a brand awareness play. Compelling product videos can generate sales while promoting the brand. Google refers to this method as “leveling up for action” using ABCD principles:

• Attention,
• Branding,
• Connection,
• Direction.

Google Ads offers seven YouTube campaign subtypes for video. They range from reaching users while browsing to driving conversions. The subtypes I will review are:

• Video views,
• Drive conversions,
• Ad sequence.

With all subtypes, audience targeting segments are in-market, affinity, demographics, and advertiser-created. The right targeting is critical. Certain campaigns are for prospecting, while others are down-funnel. Audience targeting and associated videos must align with a campaign’s goals.

Video Views

The “video views” campaign subtype is new and targets users likely to consider the product or brand. The advantage is the ads are responsive. Advertisers provide a long headline and description along with the video and landing page URL. Google then shows the video across the different ad formats, including skippable in-stream, in-feed, and through YouTube Shorts.

Bidding is set at a target cost per view (CPV), and advertisers must include a total budget with an end date. For example, a two-week campaign may have a $2,000 budget with a CPV of $0.05.

A couple of beginning steps are necessary to avoid showing ads on irrelevant YouTube channels and other sites. First, confirm the option in the Networks section to target video partners on Google’s Display Network is unchecked.

Then, once the campaign is live, add topic, placement, and keyword exclusions. Similar to negative keywords in Search campaigns, these exclusions stop ads from showing on the wrong sites and YouTube channels. Unfortunately, without exclusions videos will show on irrelevant sites even with precise targeting.

Drive Conversions

Advertisers using the “drive conversions” subtype can optimize for specific actions and use goal-based bid strategies such as target cost-per-acquisition and return-on-ad-spend. Ecommerce merchants can attach their Google Merchant Center feed to show products with the ads.

Test a variety of videos and lengths. For example, test three videos, each at 10, 20, and 30 seconds, for nine altogether. As with video views, “drive conversions” ads are responsive.

Here are a couple of examples, below. The first is a skippable in-stream ad on computers, and the second is an in-feed video on phones.

Ad Sequence

Perhaps the most interesting campaign subtype, ad sequence tells a story through a video series. Consumers must view a video before they can see the next. Google offers many sequences. The most common is “custom” (advertisers create their own sequence) and “automatic” (Google optimizes).

As with the other campaign subtypes, ad sequence audiences can be as general or as specific as necessary. Bidding is target cost-per-thousand-impressions (CPM) or maximum cost per view. Budgets are set with end dates. Ads can show only on YouTube for 7 or 30 days — viewers see an entire sequence just once during that time.

A sample sequence can include three videos, such as:

• First video: details a problem.
• Second video: shows how the product solves the problem.
• Third video: explains how to buy the product.

Videos can be “skippable,” “non-skippable,” or “bumper.” A bumper ad is six seconds or less. Non-skippable videos are seven to 15 seconds. Skippable videos are any length but can be skipped after five seconds. Advertisers should keep video lengths in mind when crafting a story.

The transition type from one video to the next depends on the bidding strategy. The options are “impression” (ad was shown to the viewer), “view” (viewer engaged or watched at least 30 seconds), or “skip” (viewer skipped the ad). “Impression” is the most common — anyone served the video will see the next one.

Regardless, a well-aligned sequence is critical.

Years ago Google ranked organic results by exactly matching search queries to text on a web page. At the time, search engine optimization involved creating multiple pages containing all sorts of keyword variations.

The result was an avalanche of inferior content ranking at or near the top for long-tail queries.

Search engines no longer rely on exact-match keywords, instead attempting to understand the intent and context behind a query. It’s common for Google to rank a page that doesn’t contain a single query word.

For example, a Google search for “affordable airfare” produces page-1 organic results mainly containing “cheap flights,” “last minute flight deals,” and similar. None that I saw included the exact phrase “affordable airfare.”

And searching “trails for kids upstate ny” generates organic results for “family-friendly hikes in Albany and “easy hikes near NYC” — both likely satisfying the searcher’s intent.

Google’s “How search works” portal explains the process:

To return relevant results, we first need to establish what you’re looking for — the intent behind your query. To do this, we build language models to try to decipher how the relatively few words you enter into the search box match up to the most useful content available.

This involves steps as seemingly simple as recognizing and correcting spelling mistakes and extends to trying to our sophisticated synonym system that allows us to find relevant documents even if they don’t contain the exact words you used.

Keyword Research

Is keyword research important for SEO in 2024?

While it no longer relies on exact-match queries, Google’s algorithm still uses keywords. In the same “How search works” page, Google states:

The most basic signal that information is relevant is when content contains the same keywords as your search query. For example, with webpages, if those keywords appear on the page, or if they appear in the headings or body of the text, the information might be more relevant.

Further down Google says it also uses “other relevancy signals” (presumably beyond keywords), “interaction data to assess whether search results are relevant to queries,” and machine learning to make sense of the data.

Google provides an example:

Just think: when you search for “dogs,” you likely don’t want a page with the word “dogs” on it hundreds of times. With that in mind, algorithms assess if a page contains other relevant content beyond the keyword “dogs” — such as pictures of dogs, videos, or even a list of breeds.

Yet the benefits of keyword research extend beyond SEO.

Keywords:

• Help understand the needs of target customers.
• Guage demand — high search volume signals higher demand for a product or service.
• Guide site structure — keywords with heavy search volume could be categories; lower volume subcategories.
• Identify potential high-traffic content ideas.
• Inform new products or categories.

Keyword Optimization

Optimizing for exact-match keywords is not just dated. It may be counterproductive owing to Google’s Helpful Content algorithm, which devalues websites targeting search engines rather than humans.

Instead:

• Search Google for topics and formats it considers helpful to searchers.
• Prompt ChatGPT to create personas of searchers using your keywords, including their intent and likely needs. Google uses AI similarly to identify which content better serves searchers.
• Identify related keywords for products that solve similar problems.
• Brainstorm content elements for a keyword that improve engagement, such as a table or checklist.

In short, keywords remain the “most basic signal that information is relevant” to the query, per Google. Use a primary keyword in a page’s title and meta description, but don’t force it.