How to maximize your Google Ads remarketing campaigns

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How to maximize your Google Ads remarketing campaigns

Remarketing campaigns can drive significant results when executed effectively.

This article explores advanced strategies for setting up and optimizing your remarketing efforts for greater profitability and long-term success.

Go beyond the basic remarketing setup

By default, Google Analytics creates an “All Users” audience for website visitors over the past 30 days. 

While this basic audience may be useful for beginners, setting up advanced audiences can significantly improve campaign performance in the long term.

Here are audiences to consider testing:

  • Pre-built templates in GA4: Ready to use or customizable to fit your specific needs.
  • Different timeframes: Instead of simply 30-day website visitors, test 10-day, 60-day, 90-day, or 180-day audiences based on your industry and website traffic.
  • 365-day audiences: Ideal for remarketing annual products or services, such as trips, holidays, or Black Friday deals, to previous customers.
  • Page-specific visitors: Retarget users who visited key pages, like pricing, by setting up “Page location” contains “your specific URL.”
  • Converted audiences: Target users for other products or exclude them from campaigns based on completed purchases or form submissions.
  • New visitors: Show ads only to new users, excluding repeat visitors.
  • Traffic sources: Use audiences from other platforms, like Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, or large newsletter lists, by applying Templates > Acquisition > First user source, campaign, or medium.

Additional advanced options include:

  • Inactive users: Retarget users who haven’t been active for a set timeframe (e.g., 7 days), or delay ads until specific events, like a free trial expiration.
  • Session duration: Target users who spent significant time on your website (e.g., over 1 minute) to exclude low-interest audiences.

Dig deeper: How to combine Google Ads with other channels to retarget, nurture and convert

There are three primary campaign types for targeting remarketing audiences. Let’s explore best practices for setting them up and optimizing their performance.

1. Search remarketing

Setup best practices

You can target the same remarketing audiences you’ve set up in GA4, often called RLSA (remarketing lists for search ads).

To avoid overlap, separate your search remarketing campaigns from standard search campaigns that don’t target a remarketing audience. 

The simplest approach is to create a search remarketing campaign using the same and/or different keywords while excluding that remarketing audience from your standard search campaigns.

In search remarketing, you can test broader keywords, including:

  • Broad match terms.
  • Review-related queries.
  • Competitor names. 

Since these users have already visited your site, broader targeting carries less risk.

For ad creative, you can either reuse existing ads or test unique copy tailored to search remarketing. 

Choose what performs best. If using unique ads, consider adding more selling points and testimonials. Also, test different landing pages, coupons, or special deals.

For bidding, test manual bidding, max conversions, or target CPA – especially if the campaign generates a high number of conversions. 

Even with higher CPCs, maximizing conversions can be worthwhile, as these users are already familiar with your brand.

Optimizing search remarketing campaigns

Optimization follows the same principles as standard search campaigns: 

  • Test different ad copy.
  • Adjust ad group variations.
  • Experiment with new keywords.
  • Pause underperforming ones.
  • Add negative keywords. 

However, avoid directly mirroring changes from your standard search campaigns. What works there won’t necessarily work in search remarketing.

You can swap out audiences as needed, but otherwise, optimization remains similar to standard search. 

Regular adjustments are essential. Don’t leave it on autopilot.

Dig deeper: How to boost PPC retargeting efficiency with an RFM analysis

2. Display remarketing

Setup best practices

When targeting different remarketing audiences, use separate ad groups or campaigns. 

Avoid grouping drastically different audiences together or expanding them with “optimized targeting.”

For ads, you can reuse copy from search or banner ads or test unique messaging specific to display remarketing. Choose what delivers the best results. 

With remarketing banner ads, include your logo and branding to ensure immediate recognition. Even if users don’t click, the impressions still provide branding value.

For high-traffic websites, consider testing three separate remarketing campaigns:

  • Desktop-only.
  • Tablet-only.
  • Mobile-only. 

Combining all devices in one campaign often results in mobile traffic consuming the most clicks and budget. 

Instead of blocking mobile traffic entirely or reducing bids, testing a separate mobile campaign may be more effective. Mobile clicks – especially from in-app ads – are often accidental or irrelevant. 

For bidding, test manual CPC to control volume and spend or use Maximize Conversions to stop showing ads to users who don’t convert quickly. 

Brands with larger budgets aiming for long-term visibility may benefit from manual bidding to maximize touchpoints and reinforce brand presence.

Be cautious with Maximize Clicks bidding. This strategy may favor high-click placements, such as mobile games, where accidental clicks can waste budget.

Optimizing display remarketing campaigns

Optimization follows the same principles as standard display campaigns. 

Regularly review placements – especially apps, games, celebrity gossip, quizzes, and entertainment sites – to prevent wasted spend on users who aren’t in the right mindset for your product or service. 

If mobile traffic dominates the budget, consider blocking it or running separate device-targeted campaigns.

Continuously test ads to determine which ones drive the most conversions or relevant clicks. 

If an ad underperforms with a remarketing audience, replace it. 

Avoid leaving display remarketing campaigns on autopilot. Ongoing adjustments are key to maintaining effectiveness.

Dig deeper: How to make your display campaigns profitable

3. Video remarketing

Setup best practices

Video remarketing campaigns follow a similar setup and optimization process as display remarketing campaigns. 

Use separate ad groups or campaigns for different remarketing audiences. Don’t combine them with other audiences.

For ads, you can use generic branded videos or specific product/service-based videos tailored to the user’s recent activity. 

If producing new video ads is challenging, brands often repurpose existing TV or streaming ads. 

For lower budgets, you can create simple videos using Google Ads’ built-in tool or third-party tools like Canva. 

These videos can now be hosted directly in Google Ads without needing YouTube.

Video ad campaigns offer various subtypes and bidding strategies. 

For remarketing, the simplest option is Video Views, which supports skippable in-stream ads, in-feed ads, and Shorts ads using CPV (cost per view) bidding. 

This is the easiest way to retarget past website visitors or YouTube channel viewers.

For larger budgets, consider Video Efficient Reach, which allows CPM (cost per thousand impressions) bidding and supports unskippable ads. 

Brands focused on reach may also use Non-Skippable Reach if that format aligns with their goals.

When setting up the campaign, consider disabling TV screen targeting unless you have a large brand and budget. 

Most advertisers prefer engagement beyond just branding, so blocking TV placements can help allocate spend more effectively.

The Drive Conversions subtype for video campaigns is transitioning to Demand Gen in early 2025. 

If you don’t want to expand into Gmail and Discovery ads, it’s best to focus on Video Views for remarketing.

Optimizing video remarketing campaigns

Video remarketing follows the same optimization principles as display remarketing and non-remarketing video campaigns. 

Regularly review and block irrelevant placements, including:

  • Video placements. 
  • YouTube channels.
  • Topics.
  • Apps.
  • Entertainment content. 

Video ads often waste budget on kids’ videos, unrelated apps, or entertainment channels. Make sure to continuously block irrelevant placements

If mobile traffic dominates the budget with little to no results, consider blocking it to improve campaign efficiency. 

Advanced remarketing strategies

For advanced users, enhance remarketing by layering audience targeting with relevant placements, topics, and keywords simultaneously. 

This ensures your remarketing ads appear to past website visitors while they browse specific websites, YouTube channels, or content related to your targeted topics or keywords.

For example, if you offer retirement planning services, you can target previous website visitors while they visit financial or retirement-related websites or view relevant topics. 

This strategy works for both display and video campaigns. 

You can also handpick high-authority financial or retirement websites and layer them with your remarketing audience for more precise targeting.

It’s important to note that adding a remarketing audience to a Performance Max campaign is not true remarketing. 

Performance Max uses remarketing audiences as a signal – a starting point to find similar users – rather than exclusively targeting past visitors. 

It will expand beyond that audience based on Google’s machine learning.

By leveraging advanced remarketing and optimization techniques, you can achieve significantly better results than default remarketing strategies.

Dig deeper: From search to social: Retargeting organic traffic with video strategies

Read more at Read More

Product studio now available within Google Business Profiles

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Google Product Studio is now available within Google Business Profiles. This allows you to edit the background scenes of your products within your local listing using Google’s AI features. Product studio is already available within Google services including Google Merchant Center and Google Ads, and is now available within Google Business Profiles.

More details. Google community manager, Kara, posted about this news in the Google Business Profile forums and wrote:

“We’re excited to announce that you can now change the background scene of your product with Product Studio, a generative AI tool which helps you create engaging imagery to showcase your products.”

Here is what the feature looks like in my account – it says “Transform your product images with Al Quickly generate lifestyle scenes. To get started, upload a product image and select a theme.”

How it works. Google has a more detailed help document on this feature over here but here is how to quickly access this feature in your Business Profile.

  1. Go to your Business Profile. Learn how to find your profile.
  2. To generate a scene for your product, click Edit products  Get started.
  3. Select the image you want to edit.
    • Wait until the background from your image is removed.
  4. Select a theme for your product.
    • Choose a generated image from the editor.
  5. If you’re satisfied with the image, click Add image to product.
  6. You’ll receive a confirmation to save the image, click OK.

Once you saved the generated image for your product, from the product editor:

  1. Fill out the fields in the form.
  2. To submit your product, click Publish.

US only. Google did not that “Only merchants in the US can use scene generation in product editor.” Google added, “When you use Product Studio, you agree to the Terms of Service (TOS).”

Why we care. If you manage products within your Google Business Profile account, quickly being able to make those products look more appealing to searchers might be a great thing to increase conversions and sales. Of course, you want to make sure you are happy with how Google’s AI improves your images and only accept changes that you feel will make a positive change to those images.

Read more at Read More

Google reverses stance on Performance Max campaign controls

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How to create and optimize Google Ads custom segment audiences

Google acknowledged that Performance Max (PMax) campaigns can be controlled through API placement exclusions — contradicting months of its own documentation and support guidance, according to new research from ad tech firm Optmyzr.

This revelation gives advertisers more programmatic control over their PMax campaigns than previously thought possible, potentially saving significant time and resources in campaign management.

The big picture. Performance Max campaigns, Google’s AI-driven ad format, have been a source of frustration for advertisers seeking more granular control over where their ads appear.

Lead up. Earlier this year we saw that despite Navah Hopkins, Brand Evangelist of Optmyzr, reporting that Google said that API based placements exclusions don’t work for PMax campaigns, multiple advertisers were reporting the opposite.

By the numbers. Optmyzr ran an experiment, running from Dec. 30 to Jan. 21. It showed:

  • Zero ad spend on excluded placements after implementing API controls.
  • Complete effectiveness of API-based exclusions, despite Google’s previous claims.
  • Faster implementation compared to manual UI controls.

Behind the scenes. Google’s documentation and AI help center had explicitly stated that placement exclusions would only work through their user interface, not via API.

  • Multiple support channels reinforced this incorrect guidance.
  • This misinformation was shared for months.
  • Google has since updated its stance after Optmyzr’s findings.

What they’re saying. Following the experiment, Google admitted that placement exclusions work through both the API and UI as we see in this response from Ginny Marvin, Google Ads Liaison:

Why we care. Performance Max campaigns represent a significant portion of many advertisers’ Google Ads spend, but the lack of control over where ads appear has been a major pain point. This situation also highlights a broader point: you shouldn’t take platform limitations as gospel, even when they come directly from Google. Testing and verification could reveal hidden capabilities that provide competitive advantages.

Bottom line. This discovery highlights a broader issue in ad tech: platform documentation doesn’t always reflect actual capabilities, requiring advertisers to actively test and verify functionality.

What’s next. As advertisers, you should:

  • Review your PMax campaign controls.
  • Consider implementing API-based exclusions for more efficient management.
  • Maintain active oversight despite automated controls.
  • Confidently question capabilities they may have strong reason to believe isn’t true.

Between the lines. The finding suggests other undocumented capabilities might exist across Google’s ad platforms, encouraging advertisers to question and test official limitations.

Read more at Read More

Google testing new-look search results in EU

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Google is testing a new search results display for a small group of EU users when they search for products, restaurants, flights, and hotels. The test is part of Google’s efforts to comply with the EU’s Digital Markets Act.

What’s happening. According to a report from Dow Jones Newswires:

  • “Under the test started Monday, Google has set up new units for users to choose between results from price comparison sites such as Booking Holdings’ Booking.com and results that take them directly to supplier websites when they are searching for products, restaurants, flights or hotels.”

What Google EU search results look like. Here are screenshots showing what it looks like to search for [flight to boston from vienna] right now:

You can then filter to see only Airline options:

Or Flight sites:

And if you search for [steak dinner in vienna], you can filter down to Places:

And Places Sites:

New units. These images don’t show the new units mentioned in the report. Please contact us if you spot these new units in the wild and share screenshots. These images are meant to give our readers outside of the EU an idea of what search results look like when Google doesn’t self-preference.

What Google is saying. A Google spokesperson said:

  • “To find a better balance between these sites, while meeting the goals of the DMA, we have proposed a new solution to give people a choice between intermediary comparison sites and direct suppliers like hotels.”

Why we care. The Digital Markets Act is meant to promote more competition and diversity in search results. For websites in the EU, it will be worth monitoring whether these changes result in any impact on traffic.

Dig deeper. How the Digital Markets Act is reshaping search and Google’s monopoly in Europe

Read more at Read More

Technical SEO: Don’t rush the process

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Technical SEO: Don’t rush the process

In an era where efficiency is key, many businesses question the time and resources spent on technical SEO audits. 

However, cutting corners in this critical area can lead to incomplete insights and missed opportunities. 

Let’s dive into why technical SEO deserves a firm investment in both human effort and time, starting with the often-overlooked challenge of crawl time.

Crawl time: The primary hindrance

Reducing human resource time in your SEO or digital marketing department by cutting technical SEO may be unwise. 

Why? 

The primary factor behind the time taken for audits is crawl time.

With today’s complex web architectures, this is inevitable. 

Ecommerce websites, in particular, have rapidly expanding footprints with countless product and blog pages. 

Each product often includes multiple images, increasing the number of on-site addresses exponentially.

Employers and clients frequently ask:

“Why do these audits take so long? Can’t you just focus on the top issues and save time?”

The answer is both “yes” and “no.” 

While focusing on top issues can slightly reduce the time spent on commentary and data visualization, most of the time taken in technical SEO audits is crawl time. 

The impact on overall audit accuracy remains negligible because the crawl itself – rather than data analysis – dominates the timeline.

While some argue crawl time is machine time and should not affect human effort, this is only partially true. 

Dig deeper: 7 tips for delivering high-impact technical SEO audits

Platforms like Semrush or Ahrefs can streamline crawling if properly set up, monitored, and funded to handle all web properties continuously. 

However, exporting, pivoting, and analyzing data still require significant manual effort. 

Technical SEO experts can rarely rely on platform-generated reports without further refinement.

For instance, most SEO crawlers struggle with identifying true duplicate content. 

Often, what is flagged as duplicate turns out to be parameter URLs, which Google ignores for indexing. 

Similarly, failed canonical tag implementations can falsely appear as duplicate content.

Using tools like Screaming Frog adds another layer of complexity. 

While highly cost-effective and powerful, it outputs raw spreadsheets requiring manual analysis. Its issues tab is rarely accurate without further data filtering. 

As a client-side tool, Screaming Frog also requires the user’s machine to remain active during crawls. 

If employees are using personal machines, they may be reluctant to leave them running overnight without proper compensation. 

Additionally, the tool does not automatically adjust crawl rates, necessitating human supervision to avoid unintentional DDoS-like behavior.

While crawl time is primarily machine-driven, human oversight and intervention are often required. 

Assuming that reducing crawl time will significantly shorten technical SEO audits can lead to inaccurate results and neglected insights.

Dig deeper: Top 6 technical SEO action items for 2025

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HTML tag mutuality

HTML tag mutuality, particularly with hreflang tags, demonstrates why reducing crawl time is inadvisable if you want accurate technical SEO insights.

As SEO has evolved, mutually dependent HTML tags, like hreflang tags, have become increasingly common. 

Hreflang tags define relationships between pages in different languages and must always be reciprocal. 

If one page links to another with a hreflang tag, but the destination URL does not return the same tag, the relationship is invalid and ignored by Google.

Even non-mutual tags, such as canonical tags, often reference external addresses that also need to be crawled. 

Crawling only one section of a site (e.g., one language variant) leaves you unable to verify whether hreflang tags point back as required. 

This can result in unflagged errors that are critical for site performance but remain undetected due to partial crawl data.

Similarly, canonical tags, though not requiring mutuality, can also pose challenges. 

If a canonical tag points to a page outside your crawl sample, you cannot confirm whether it references a valid address.

Here is a diagram of how canonical tags and hreflang tags should interface:

How canonical tags and hreflang tags should interface
The diagram above is an updated and more detailed version of a simpler one I’ve used for years. It was originally published on BSS Commerce in 2019. You can find the earlier version here. 

These issues illustrate how incomplete crawl data can hinder a thorough technical SEO audit. 

Partial data forces you to rely on assumptions rather than concrete evidence, making it unwise to reduce crawl time to expedite audits.

Dig deeper: 4 of the best technical SEO tools

Links and redirects

Producing accurate crawl data has required significant effort since the early days of the web, long before HTML tag mutuality became common. 

Pages have always linked to others using the <A> tag. 

If your crawl sample includes links pointing to addresses outside of it, you cannot verify whether those links function correctly without crawling the destination pages.

Some cloud crawling platforms address this by checking the status codes of external or redirected pages without analyzing their full HTML. 

While this can help in certain cases, it often defers deeper issues that remain unexamined.

Redirects present similar challenges. 

If a page in your crawl sample points to a destination outside it, you cannot fully analyze the redirect chain. 

This can lead to inaccurate redirect-shrinking recommendations, potentially causing significant problems for the site.

Dig deeper: How to prioritize technical SEO tasks

Be careful when reducing technical SEO time

There is no substitute for investing the necessary time in technical SEO.

While incomplete crawl samples or unattended crawls might seem like a way to reduce audit production time, they often create more issues than they solve. 

Cutting corners can lead to overlooked problems, so it’s crucial to give your audits – and the experts conducting them – the time they require.

This doesn’t even account for the manual checks SEO professionals perform in addition to crawling, data handling, formatting, and analysis.

These combined efforts make it clear that the time spent on technical SEO is justified. 

Avoid excessive pruning or shortcuts in this discipline.

If you must work with partial crawl data, ensure at least 70% crawl completion – 50% at an absolute minimum. 

Anything less risks compromising the accuracy of your audit.

Read more at Read More

The top 5 strategic SEO mistakes enterprises make (and how to avoid them)

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The top 5 strategic SEO mistakes enterprises make (and how to avoid them)

Enterprise SEO comes with unique challenges: massive websites, coordination across departments, and the need for a strategic vision.

Without careful planning, common SEO mistakes can lead to wasted resources and underperformance in the search results.

This article explores some of the top strategic mistakes enterprises make with SEO and, more importantly, how to avoid them.

1. Failing to secure the ‘right’ buy-in for SEO initiatives

When you get buy-in from the right people in your organization, you can rest assured the SEO program will have more resources and prioritization.

This is not just about the CMO seeing the value in SEO, either. SEO must be seen as a strategic business initiative all the way to the top.

Case in point: An enterprise client of my SEO agency knew that their SEO program would only be successful if every department with a stake in the website’s success were on board.

The company chairman called a meeting to discuss the value of SEO.

This is not common but was necessary for this project. Every key team got behind the SEO program, and the company experienced massive results.

So, what are some of the common challenges when securing buy-in? One of the biggest is a lack of understanding of SEO’s value.

The C-suite is working hard on their own initiatives and areas of expertise. They may not fully grasp how SEO contributes to business growth and revenue.

This is where you come in.

  • Show them the data, like how people are searching for the things your organization provides.
  • Explain to them how SEO supports the customer journey in many different ways.
  • Demonstrate how SEO can support company goals.
  • Illustrate how SEO drives revenue and its long-term ROI compared to initiatives like digital advertising.
  • Address common misconceptions about SEO as a non-essential or supplementary activity.
  • Pilot a small project or address the “quick wins” and give tangible results.
  • Propose an SEO plan that can be executed with current resources, but that could be scaled later.
  • Assign an SEO champion within each department to advocate for best practices and drive implementation across teams.

Having SEO conversations can be an eye-opener for leadership. And it may be just the thing they need to take notice of SEO as an essential marketing program.

Once you get buy-in from the right groups, you can break down those business silos that can slow progress in an enterprise organization.

Dig deeper: How to convince leadership why they can’t ignore SEO

2. Underinvesting in SEO continuing education or training

Continuing education is one of the most powerful tools in your SEO team’s toolbelt.

It can:

  • Help your team stay proactive, not reactive, in the ever-changing world of SEO.
  • Facilitate better collaboration between internal teams and external SEO vendors.
  • Empower your team to innovate and test new strategies.

Any good SEO professional or team will naturally want to stay up-to-date with what’s happening in the SEO world. It’s a requirement to succeed.

But the question is, how are you supporting them in their continuing education?

Make time

Ensure that employees are allowed the time for continuing education, not just working on projects.

For employees, this means not trying to cram learning in after hours but as a part of their regular work week without feeling stressed about it.

Give support

What educational opportunities resonate with your SEO professional or team?

Give them the freedom to choose and the budget to buy. This includes virtual and in-person events, professional memberships and materials.

Foster knowledge sharing

Since you’re working on making SEO a strategic business initiative, all stakeholders will benefit from learning about SEO.

Invest in SEO training for other teams beyond marketing, for example, the C-suite or IT, to create a baseline knowledge of SEO at the company.

Host internal workshops regularly to share insights and updates about SEO, too.

Test what’s been learned

Encourage your team to test what they learn through small-scale experiments or pilot projects.

Dig deeper: 5 questions to evaluate any SEO training course

3. Ineffective hiring and onboarding of an SEO agency 

When companies are ready to partner with SEO agencies, they must hire and onboard effectively for the best chance at a productive partnership.

Missteps here can lead to misaligned goals, wasted resources and subpar performance. So what to do?

When hiring an SEO agency, be sure to:

  • Properly vet the agency.
  • Evaluate the agency’s company ethics and level of expertise.
  • Figure out if the services offered are actually what you require to succeed.
  • Make sure the agency’s processes mesh well with your company culture.
  • Watch out for any red flags that signal a poor-quality agency.

The onboarding process is just as important as the hiring process. Here are some important things to consider as you forge a new partnership with an SEO agency:

  • Make sure they know your business: Share detailed insights into your company’s history, products, services and market positioning.
  • Define roles and responsibilities: Clearly outline the tasks and expectations for both your team and the agency.
  • Establish regular communication channels: Set up consistent meetings and reporting to keep things aligned.
  • Set realistic expectations: Agree on achievable timelines and outcomes.

Dig deeper: How to hire an SEO agency: The definitive guide

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4. Overlooking the value of maintaining high-quality content

Enterprise companies usually need volumes of content for their SEO programs to compete in the search results.

With the sometimes overwhelming amount of content needed, it can be easy to lose sight of quality while trying to hit targets.

With multiple teams and departments contributing content, enterprises also struggle with inconsistency in quality, tone and SEO best practices.

Here are some tips for high-quality enterprise SEO content:

Establish centralized guidelines and quality control

Managing content at the enterprise level requires consistency and collaboration:

  • Create a centralized content quality framework for all departments. Include standards for tone, formatting, SEO best practices and E-E-A-T.
  • Provide cross-departmental training to establish a baseline understanding of SEO principles for all contributors.
  • Consider a dedicated quality control person in each department to review and approve all content before publication.

Prioritize search intent 

Focus on creating content that addresses the needs of your target audience first. Decide how you will maintain this quality while scaling content as needed.

Meeting search intent will result in higher engagement and better rankings than producing high volumes of generic content.

Use tools to monitor and optimize performance

Use analytics to measure content performance and identify gaps. Regularly refresh top-performing, outdated or underperforming content to maintain relevance and effectiveness.

I recommend spending 50% of the time refreshing older content.

Ensure AI-generated content meets quality standards

While AI tools can be valuable for scaling production, human oversight is key.

Have a system in place to uphold quality when using AI-generated content. Make sure it meets your brand’s standards and complies with Google’s quality guidelines.

Dig deeper: How to survive the search results when you’re using AI tools for content

5. Not prioritizing technical SEO 

Enterprise websites can be massive, creating unique challenges for technical SEO. Unfortunately, these challenges compound at scale.

Even the best SEO strategies can fail if technical SEO isn’t handled well.

But technical SEO at the enterprise level isn’t just about fixing bugs; it’s about creating sustainable processes.

Prioritize processes and cross-departmental responsibilities

Enterprise websites need workflows for technical SEO issues. Start by creating clear systems that outline how to identify, prioritiz, and resolve issues.

Assign ownership to specific teams, such as IT or web development, to ensure a quick response when challenges arise.

Finally, educate teams about the importance of technical SEO and their responsibilities.

For example, content creators should structure new pages with proper tags and metadata, while developers should ensure site changes are vetted for SEO implications.

When all departments work together, technical SEO becomes a seamless part of the workflow.

Use automation and tools to manage complexity

With massive websites and multiple teams, automation and tools are helpful for enterprise SEO.

Here are some tips:

  • Centralize and align your toolset: As much as possible, streamline your SEO tools into a unified system that integrates with the platforms you use.
  • Focus on scalable tools: Invest in tools that can grow with your website’s needs.
  • Automate the repetition: Use automation for predictable, time-intensive technical SEO tasks.
  • Monitor, refine, repeat: Regularly audit tool performance and workflows to ensure tools are aligned with your SEO goals as they evolve.

Plan for long-term maintenance

As your website grows, so will its technical challenges. A proactive approach will sustain SEO performance:

  • Schedule technical audits before major initiatives.
  • Stay ahead of the curve by aligning site initiatives with emerging search engine changes.
  • Make sure SEO is built into any major update to a website.

Avoiding common SEO mistakes is the path to enterprise success

Success at the enterprise level is defined by adopting the right mindset and workflows. This means creating a culture that prioritizes SEO as a strategic initiative and embedding it into every department that has a stake in the website.

With a clear vision, a commitment to improvements and the right processes, your enterprise can stand out in the search results and achieve sustained search growth.

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Google sending manual actions for site reputation abuse in Germany

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Google appears to be rolling out manual actions, search penalties, across German-based sites over the site reputation abuse policy. This comes a week or so after Google expanded the penalties across Europe, for sites in Italy, Spain, and France.

What we’re seeing. Christian Kunz, posted on his German-based SEO blog that Google has probably taken first manual actions in Germany against site reputation abuse. A search results set for coupon codes that previously showed many news websites is now no longer showing these sites in the top rankings. Laura Chiocciora, head of SEO at Bravo Savings Network, posted on X adding this morning:

Why we care. Google seems to accelerating its enforcement of the site reputation abuse policy well beyond the US and other regions now. It is just a matter of time until this expands to more and more regions and locations.

If you have content on your site that is going against this policy, then it might be time to start planning on removing it, even if you are in a country that has not been impacted yet.

U.S. manual actions. Google began penalizing sites under its (then) new search spam policies in March 2024. This was announced at the same time as the March 2024 Google core update, which Google’s Elizabeth Tucker called the biggest core update ever at SMX Advanced last year.

What is site reputation abuse? When third-party sites host low-quality content provided by third parties to piggyback on the ranking power of those third-party websites. As Google told us in March 2024:

  • “A third party might publish payday loan reviews on a trusted educational website to gain ranking benefit from the site.”
  • “Such content ranking highly in Search can confuse or mislead visitors who may have vastly different expectations for the content on a given website.”

Under Google’s new policy, site reputation abuse is defined as “third-party content produced primarily for ranking purposes and without close oversight of a website owner” and “intended to manipulate Search rankings” will be considered spam.

The new Google Search spam policies about reputation abuse was announced by Google over here and and the updated policies are over here.

Later, Google expanded the policy to include first party content.

About manual actions. Websites that Google takes manual action are reviewed by humans – they are not given algorithmically. According to Google:

  • “Google issues a manual action against a site when a human reviewer at Google has determined that pages on the site are not compliant with Google’s spam policies. Most manual actions address attempts to manipulate our search index. Most issues reported here will result in pages or sites being ranked lower or omitted from search results without any visual indication to the user.”

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Microsoft Performance Max testing LinkedIn targeting, measurement tools

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Microsoft Ads: How it compares to Google Ads and tips for getting started

Microsoft Ads will soon roll out four major updates to Performance Max, significantly expanding your ability to target, measure, and optimize your campaigns.

These updates will give advertisers more granular control over their automated campaigns while introducing LinkedIn’s professional targeting data — a unique advantage over competing platforms.

What’s new. Here are the four new features:

  • LinkedIn integration. Advertisers in six major markets (U.S., Canada, UK, Australia, France, and Germany) will be able to tap into LinkedIn’s professional targeting data, including company, industry, and job function signals.
  • Reporting gets granular. Advertisers will be able to analyze performance by audience segments and track individual asset performance, providing clearer insights into what’s working.
  • Smart conversion tracking. New conversion value rules will let advertisers adjust values in real-time based on business-specific factors like location and device usage, making automated bidding more precise.
  • New customer focus. You will be able to enable specific targeting of new customers, with options to either increase bids for new customers or focus exclusively on acquiring them.

Why we care. Should these long awaited changes fully roll out, it should give you more precise control over automated campaigns while providing better measurement tools and access to professional audience data. For B2B marketers especially, the LinkedIn targeting integration across represents a significant competitive advantage with these new sophisticated audience targeting opportunities.

What’s next. These features are in pilot, suggesting Microsoft is gathering feedback before a broader rollout.

Bottom line. Microsoft is positioning Performance Max as a more sophisticated alternative to competing automated ad platforms by leveraging its unique access to LinkedIn’s professional network data.

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YouTube testing cost-per-hour masthead

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3 YouTube Ad formats you need to reach and engage viewers in 2025

YouTube is testing a new advertising offering that lets brands own its most prominent ad space — the Masthead — by the hour, marking a significant shift in how marketers can capture attention.

This new Cost-Per-Hour (CPH) Masthead gives advertisers 100% share of voice across all YouTube devices during crucial timeframes, potentially transforming how brands approach major launches and cultural moments, according to a slide obtained by Search Engine Land.

The big picture. The CPH Masthead complements YouTube’s existing CPM (cost per thousand impressions) Masthead offering, providing advertisers more flexibility in how they dominate YouTube’s prime advertising real estate.

How it works. Advertisers can purchase specific hours leading up to, during, or after their priority moments, guaranteeing complete ownership of eligible Masthead impressions across desktop, mobile, connected TV, and tablet devices.

Preview of a Masthead ad

Why we care. YouTube’s new Cost-Per-Hour Masthead offering represents a significant shift in premium advertising control, giving brands guaranteed 100% share of voice across all YouTube platforms during specific hours. This offering would give you maximum visibility during your most critical marketing moments, with the added flexibility to combine these hourly takeovers with regular CPM campaigns for comprehensive coverage.

Between the lines. This move signals YouTube’s recognition that advertisers need more precise timing control for major brand moments, rather than just broad reach.

By the numbers. While YouTube hasn’t disclosed specific pricing, the flat cost-per-hour pricing model offers predictable budgeting for marketers — a departure from traditional impression-based pricing.

Target use cases:

  • Major product launches
  • Time-sensitive announcements
  • Holiday campaigns
  • Livestream event promotion
  • Cultural moment marketing

How to get it. Advertisers are advised to reach out to their representative to learn more about CPH Masthead buys.

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Ex-Hubspotters reveal 5 SEO insights about HubSpot’s traffic woes

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HubSpot’s SEO collapse has been the talk of the SEO world for the last several days.

As a reminder, here’s a screenshot of HubSpot’s organic traffic drop, based on Semrush data:

Among the endless reactions and perspectives, two former HubSpot employees shared five good reminders about SEO strategy.

1. SEO takes time

Pruning content and focusing on E-E-A-T were among the many obvious remedies SEOs pointed out following the news of HubSpot’s apparent organic traffic decline.

Well, these aren’t simple tweaks for a brand the size of HubSpot. They’re massive undertakings, according to this LinkedIn post by Bianca Anderson, HubSpot’s former SEO strategist (who is now manager, organic growth for hims and hers):

  • “When HubSpot began optimizing for EEAT, it required overhauling processes in a way that significantly slowed the output of net-new content AND optimizations. Additionally, pruning a blog at HubSpot’s scale, with thousands of articles, is no small task and takes extensive effort to execute effectively (and SMARTLY).
  • “…fixing this kind of thing isn’t an overnight process. It’s not as simple as mass redirects. This type of work can take YEARS to properly execute.”

Dig deeper. How long SEO takes to work

2. Google’s algorithm is extremely volatile

This may feel like an obvious observation for many of you reading, but Anderson made an important point about how volatile Google’s algorithm has been lately:

  • “Algorithm updates over the past two years have been unprecedented in their volatility (I know we all know this, but just want to emphasize) — it’s been an onslaught. Major brands like HubSpot and WordStream, are feeling these changes deeply.”

Dig deeper. Google algorithm updates.

3. There is no shared definition of ‘content quality’

Google is not the sole arbiter of quality, according to this LinkedIn post by Braden Becker, former principal growth marketing manager at HubSpot (who is now the global SEO lead for Faire):

  • “I believe their quality standards are vastly more sophisticated than they were when I was working on the HubSpot Blog, and the company is surely paying a little for that. But just because Google makes a grand decision on a big website doesn’t mean the victim objectively deserved it.”

Becker highlighted another key point about quality:

  • “There’s a difference between ‘quality’ and ‘the most helpful answer’ to a given search term. I think Google consistently focuses on the latter, despite not always being clear about that.”

Dig deeper. Mastering content quality: The ultimate guide

4. SEO strategies must always evolve

SEO strategy is fluid, Becker said:

  • “You try to do what’s right for the business at the time. What worked, we kept doing. And what didn’t work, we stopped doing.”

Anderson added:

  • “From what I’ve seen, TOFU (top-of-funnel) non-ICP (Ideal Customer Profile) targeting content seems to be the most impacted. Is this partly the result of a wide-scale strategic de-prioritization? Maybe. I don’t know.
  • “What I do know is this: HubSpot has been actively working on this long before these traffic declines became more publicly known.”

Dig deeper. Evolving SEO for 2025: What needs to change

5. Traffic is not a leading metric of success

Traffic and revenue are not the same thing, as Anderson pointed out:

  • “Traffic is cool, but it should rarely be a leading metric of success (especially now). Conversions or other core KPIs that drive business matter far more.”

Dig deeper. SEO KPIs to track and measure SEO success

Bottom line. Peter Rota, senior technical SEO manager, HUB International, made several great points in this LinkedIn post. Of note:

  • We can only see a portion of what happened – we don’t have Google Analytics or Google Search Console data.
  • We don’t know how many of these keywords brought meaningful visitors.
  • We don’t know whether any of this lost traffic impacted their sales/revenue. We might get more insight Feb. 12 – that’s the date when HubSpot is expected to release its Q4 results.

Rota added:

  • “In SEO, you can literally do everything right, and one day, Google could be like know what, we’re changing things. No site is truly ‘white hat,’ and everyone thinks they’re doing amazing SEO until you get hit.
  • “We all have access to the same public data, but the reality is that the SEOs who are working/ worked at HubSpot only know the true story of what happened.
  • “So, stop giving advice, stop thinking you know better. They literally wrote the book on inbound marketing and have taught many of us SEO or we’ve learned something from them.”

More analysis. Leading international SEO expert Aleyda Solis wrote a good analysis of Hubspot’s (public) rankings and traffic data in Hubspot’s Blog Organic Search Traffic Drop: What happened? Is it really that bad? What does it mean for SEO?

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