Your AdWords Account: Ad Disapproved – Malicious or Unwanted Software – Why Did My Ads Get Disapproved?

Red Alert

Last night, 9:33pm, a slack notification lit up my watch from our lead developer with the preview, “red alert?”

Ok, so, that’s probably not a Slack to skip.

I jumped into the conversation while at the same time peeking at my email inbox only to notice the “Your AdWords Account: Ad Disapproved” emails warning that 800+ of our ads had been disapproved for “malicious or unwanted software” found on our site.

Is Twitter Tailored Audiences Conscientious Retargeting?

 

Read this to change the way you think about retargeting, i.e. following your visitors around the web with ads.

 

Then read this about the exciting new content promotion opportunities Twitter has opened up with the launch of Tailored Audiences.

 

This stuff is applicable and exciting, especially when paired with our recent push to get to know our customers at HireAHelper. The few retargeting attempts we’ve made so far have been simple tests, advertising to anyone who abandons a certain point in our checkout process. It’s one step better than following every visitor that bounces off our site, but still not as creative or conscientious as I’d like our marketing to be. Like Avinash says in the first post I mentioned, “A single visit to your site does not signal an intention to buy.”

One other thought: we have Facebook retargeting running via PerfectAudience and traditional display retargeting running through AdRoll. Our recent numbers show a much higher ROI from the Facebook retargeting efforts.

Depending on how you value view through conversions, Facebook retargeting is earning us 126% ROI vs. standard display retargeting barely breaking even. It’ll be interesting as we put more time into each campaign to see if the standard retargeting with Adroll starts bringing in a better return. Otherwise, we might just start cyphoning some of the Adroll budget towards our PerfectAudience campaigns.

 

How do you feel about retargeting? What works? What doesn’t? What are some creative ways you’ve segmented retargeting audiences?

 

Rand(om) SEO Insights into Panda

The “Monthly Moz-Letter” almost got deleted today on my crusade to clean out my Gmail inbox. Glad I decided to open it – I almost missed this gold nugget from the Rand(om) Question section:

One last thing I’ll say about Panda in particular – you need to be willing to take dramatic action to respond. The sites I’ve seen recover are those who’ve done a complete redesign and a refresh of their content, making things so wonderfully amazing that they stand out as the best result for the query. Those who’ve made iterative attempts to reduce ads a little or throw some extra paragraphs on a page so as to hopefully get over the Panda algo generally haven’t.

Best of luck!
Rand

My take away? The huge light bulb moment SEO insight? If you want to rank first in Google in a post-Panda world, you’ve got to be a resource the best resource on the topic you’re targeting. Lead-aggregation sites (one of our biggest local rankings enemies in the moving industry) can’t just add tons of bogus content with a few keyword mentions, and increase their link buying budget and hope to outrank legit, helpful sites. But this also means that the websites of legit, authoritative businesses might not rank well if those biz owners don’t share their knowledge , and instead get caught up in the “Everyone needs to be on every social network to talk about themselves as much as possible” scamvice. Self promotion across social networks is not the same as being a helpful resource contributing to the betterment of your industry. I’m worried for the thousands of mom & pop businesses across the country that might miss that.

Mom & pop, if you’re reading this, here’s the best SEO advice I’ve got – be the best, most authoritative, most comprehensive, most helpful resource in the world on the topic you’re selling. Give all that helpful information away for free so that it spreads easily (Seth Godin shout-out). Then people will want to visit your site, want to find it in Google, Bing, Yahoo, Blekko, etc and, in turn, those search engines will want to deliver your site to the people using their search engines.

Guest Post Counterpoint to “Social Signals and Algorithm Changes – Industry Dependent?”

An SEO friend, Alec, emailed me after reading my theory on a “relativity factor” in the Google algorithm. He had to respectfully disagree and explained why. I loved his point of view and asked if I could post his thoughts here as a guest post. He also has an intriguing article on the side effects of too much sleep over at the Healthy Way. Check out his side of the discussion and let me know your thoughts in the comments…

Photo credit to quinn.anya

I just ran across your last post and being my usual contrary self, I have to disagree with you when you say a “one-size-fits-all approach wouldn’t work.” In this case I think it would. Market forces make it more equatable and eliminate the need for “fair metrics relative to [each] industry”. Besides since when is G fair? (but that is another discussion)

Big G wouldn’t necessarily have to have another algo factor for movers or any other industry (isn’t each industry unique?) as the industry itself will create their own relative effect on one another’s rankings by their willingness or ability to participate in each of the ranking factors.

Here is what I mean:

Social Signals and Algorithm Changes – Industry Dependent?

During my rabid consumption of SEO knowledge in the form of podcasts, webinars, and blog posts, I’ve come to the conclusion they’re all wrong.

Not entirely, and not necessarily individually. But as a whole, if you combine all the suggestions & theories, they’re very one-size-fits all. I hear over and over again “social is important,” “You gotta build a Facebook community of thousands of followers around your brand,” “keywords in the URL are on the out,” “get your url tweeted & re-tweeted.”

From what I’ve seen in the moving industry, these are not true for everyone.

Feed the Google Panda

The recent Google algorithm updates (yes plural, if you’ve been reading the right sources), have many in a SEO panic, scrambling to add unique content to their sites, trying to write and re-write catchy phrases & titles, spamming the web with their infographics about not spamming the web with infographics.

But there is a small handful of people not freaking out… (inspiring video after the break).

Me Venting at SEO Email Spam

(In response to the email above)
Dear SEO Email Spammers,

Please stop emailing me your promises for “increased of the best SEO servicing.” Your grammar is atrocious – which, to start, would guarantee I wouldn’t hire you or even respond to your email regardless of the service you were offering.