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[internetandnetwork]

A Comprehensive and Easy-to-Digest Guide to Google Ads Budgeting

Budgeting is always a tedious task. Whether you are saving bucks to pay your rent for an overpriced apartment or paving your way to the internet realm, or both at the same time, it pushes the average person into a strenuous situation.

While there are some ways to lighten this insanity, there’s no way to avoid budgeting appropriately without crippling yourself in the future entirely. That’s particularly the case with Google Ads, where each click either represents your business growth or your hard-earned money turning into paper.

Moreover, unfortunately, there are scarce resources that take a comprehensive approach to Google Ads budgeting. So it means you will have to fathom it yourself.

This guide will discuss everything you need to know about proper PPC budgeting strategy from scratch. To make things a bit easier, we have divided this entire guide into three easily digestible parts:

Deciding your initial Google Ads budget

Allocating spend across different search campaign types

Budgeting for everything else Google Ads offers

So without wasting another moment, let’s dive into the details, shall we?

1. DECIDING YOUR INITIAL GOOGLE ADS BUDGET

Let’s say you have handed over your credit card details, funded your Google Ads account, and have also installed Google Ads Editor. But what next?

Now you have to ascertain your total expenditure in the first quarter. And by that, we don’t mean month, week, day, or even hour. We mean the first click on your ad.

While deciding your initial Google Ads budget, you should ask yourself these primary questions:

How do Google Ads fit in your existing marketing strategy?

What and where are your competitors spending their budget currently?

What is the cost-per-click of the keywords you are bidding on at the moment?

Which key performance indicators do you care about the most?

Once you find answers to all these questions, you will be all set to jump into the different types of campaigns, their optimization, and ultimately expansion. Keeping this in mind, let us dive into these questions now.

How Do Google Ads Align With Your Existing Marketing Strategy?

In case your business is the local community’s basic necessity or enjoys a thriving online presence (i.e., you’re a thought leader in your industry bringing loads of organic traffic to your website with good SEO and content writing), there’s a high probability that your leads will arrive at your door themselves willing to purchase. On the contrary, a business in the making that has its finger on its target audience’s pulse can accomplish something similar via a diehard social following. Moreover, this organic traffic is essentially “free of cost,” aside from the time and efforts of whoever leads these efforts, of course.

Also, think about the different marketing channels you use with the purpose of growing your business. These channels might include commercials, radio ads, billboards, and so on.

Write down all the marketing channels you employ and ask yourself: is the goal of my Google Ads account to reinforce my current efforts or supplant them?

What and Where Are Your Competitors Spending Their Budget Currently?

Go ahead and perform a Google search for your brand’s name right away. What appears at the top of the search results page?

Unless you are new to Google Adwords, your answer should be our optimized-to-the-gills branded advertisements. Nevertheless, if you happen to be a novice, a gambler would bet that the SERP is filled with your competitors.

Other than your branded keywords, there are several tools (such as Google Keyword Planner) you can use to get a sense of what and where your competitors are spending their advertising budget.

With this data at your disposal, you can quickly build strategies to dethrone your competitors’ ads from the top positions in the search results and discover (less expensive) keywords that no one else was intelligent enough to bid on before you turned up.

What Is the Cost-per-Click of the Keywords You Are Bidding on at the Moment?

Remember the tools we mentioned in the above section? Well, it’s time to put them to use once again.

One of the most elementary ways to decide your advertising budget is to weigh up the CPC of the keywords you are bidding on currently. Is this information enough on its own when it comes to determining a budget? Of course, not. But it does give a good starting point.

Visit Google Keyword Planner and in the left interface, fill in one of your landing pages. Modify the rest of the parameters, including location, industry, terms to avoid, etc., accordingly and browse through the lists of potential keywords together with their comparative popularity and advertiser competition.

Now try the same with the pages that relate to all the products or services your business offers. It will undoubtedly unveil some underrated search phrases that you can place your bids on next. Preferably, you want to search for as many high-traffic and low-competition keywords with commercial intent as possible. That’s how you’ll find your sweet spot.

We will take a deeper dive into this in some time. But it all comes down to this: keywords suggesting affinity or urgency tend to convert more compared to terms that don’t. Moreover, a branded search term communicates more intent than a competitor term. For example, the search phrase “cab from boston to brookline midnight” conveys way more urgency (and is hence more valuable) than “cab service,” although its search volume might be notably lesser. 

Which Key Performance Indicators Do You Care About the Most?

As they say, save the best for the last. This is the most crucial question you need to ask yourself. A key performance indicator can be defined as a measurable value that allows an individual or business to measure performance. As a matter of fact, not all businesses give the same level of importance to the same thing.

For some businesses, cost per acquisition is the lifeblood. You wouldn’t believe the number of initial calls that starts with a cost per acquisition plucked out of thin air. If you are confident that this is the key performance indicator for your business, fix a goal rooted in logic. However, if something more concrete suits your style better, you can ascertain, on average, how many conversions it takes to result in an actual customer (tracked via Google Ads) and figure out your real cost per acquisition. However, you can also leverage your current cost per acquisition from other channels, set it as a goal for paid search and accordingly increase or decrease as you get your hands on more data over time.

Additionally, businesses utilize several other key performance indicators as barometers for effective Google Ads campaigns. So, in the end, it’s up to you to figure out which one is best for your business.

Once you answer all four of these questions successfully, check out your discoveries. To decide your budget, you will want to consider the key performance indicators that you plan to judge your performance on, along with the number of leads or sales you are hoping to gather from Google Ads. Check out the other marketing channels you are employing and try to implement any related goals you have set as your starting point for Google Ads. At last, weigh up the CPC of keywords that you will probably bid on by analyzing the ones that your competitors have picked already (and also the ones they haven’t yet).

Key Takeaways:

Leverage data from your existing marketing efforts in order to inform the structure and budget of your Google Ads account.

Use keyword research and competitor analysis to decrease your learning curve and get the ball rolling.

Ascertain your budget by determining the key performance indicators that matter the most to you and working in reverse from the figures representing profitability.

2. ALLOCATING SPEND ACROSS DIFFERENT SEARCH CAMPAIGN TYPES

In general terms, all your Google Ads search campaigns will come under one of these five categories: research, top performers, high intent, competitor, and branded. While all these classifications are adaptable, some of them are outright liquid.

Logic says that you should feed most of your Google Ads budget to your top-performing search terms. But what about the remaining of them?

Top-of-the-Funnel Keywords

Often, a novice will build PPC campaigns targeting top-of-the-funnel keywords. For example, an enterprising yet acutely under-informed chartered public accountant will bid on the keyword “chartered public accountant.” And it sounds logical, right?

But unfortunately, in the majority of the industries, such keywords will mostly cost you a fortune. For some terms, the price can easily be more than $50 a click! However, that’s not necessarily the case with all industries and keywords. Now that we have made our point, you need to find out if your vertical is overflowing with soaring CPCs. However, the biggest problem with such keywords is not even the price; it’s the intent.

To provide you with a little context, let’s suppose you are a disorganized upstart in the business card industry which happens to be extremely competitive. When you look for keywords with the most average monthly searches, you find the search phrase “business cards” at the top position. But think about the users searching for this term – most of them will be wantrepreneurs who will never complete an order. So instead of spending those couple of dollars here, you will want to spend them on keywords that communicate intent better, such as “buy business cards” or a bit more costly but more commercial “order business cards.”

Nevertheless, this doesn’t mean that top-of-the-funnel terms are necessarily expensive or worthless. Such keywords are undoubtedly an incredible way to generate brand awareness and incorporate more prospects into your remarketing list. So if you do choose to bid on these, make sure you do it smartly. Pick a less pricey keyword such as “free business cards,” add the prospects to your list and remarket to them.

Branded Keywords

For some confusing and unfathomable reason, using branded keywords is usually disputed. But that’s silly.

Although your site must be the first thing that appears in the organic search results when a user Googles your business, there’s also a massive piece of real estate above the organic listings that your competitors are free to claim, if, of course, you don’t do it first.

Think of this: your competitors are made to pay a premium if they want to bid on your brand, but the cost-per-click you will see for the same keywords will be much cheaper. That’s because your landing page ad copy and domain are going to be hyper-relevant to the terms, leading to maximized Quality Score and thus lower CPCs.

Long story short, though branded keywords should in no way be the only terms you bid on, allocating spend to secure SERP domination is necessary.

Competitor Keywords

Recall everything we discussed regarding branded keywords. Now the opposite stands true when it comes to bidding on competitor keywords. What we did with the top-of-the-funnel keywords is exactly what you will want to do here – make use of research and common sense to make sure you are not merely burning your Google Ads budget on terms that won’t ever convert.

One of the biggest blunders that advertisers often make here is that they bid on the wrong competitor keywords. When picking competitor keywords to bid on, as a rule of thumb, ensure that you select actual competitors that you’re truly contending against. Pick competitors who you believe you have a competitive edge over, whether it is – better features, prices, quality, or anything else.

High-Intent Keywords

If top-of-the-funnel keywords are an expensive wild goose chase, think of high-intent keywords as golden eggs dropped into your lap.

High-intent terms are available in two flavors – “buy now” and “product/service.” You will want to make sure that you’re using the largest chunk of your Google Ads budget to bid on keywords that come under one of these classifications (extra points if you are able to unveil keywords that exist somewhere in the middle).

In general terms, “buy now” keywords are the ones that suggest that a potential customer is prepared to make the final decision about your product/service. They have either completed their research or been referred by a close friend, and now it is time to purchase. Usually, these “buy now” terms consist of top-of-the-funnel keywords joined with terms such as buy, free shipping, discount, coupon, deal, and so on.

For more clarity on how research is different from the intent to buy, pick any random keywords, say “summer dresses.” Check out the keyword “summer dresses,” followed by the various “buy now” iterations.

Needless to say, the search volume for “summer dresses” will be dramatically higher compared to the other terms. But those other terms convey more intent to purchase.

On the other hand, the “product/service” terms comprise:

Branded searches

Particular products/services (Samsung TV, car maintenance)

Categories of products (winter outfits, travel accessories)

Top

Best

Cheapest

Comparison

Affordable, and so on

While this is a much wider category, not all types of product/service terms will turn into a top-converting keyword for you.

Having said that, the only way to ascertain what does not work for your business is to try out everything as consciously as possible. If something drains your account, stop it right away, but if it converts at a CPA (cost per acquisition) considerably below the account average, you have got your hands on the best converter.

Top Performers

After operating your Google Ads account for at least a month, you will get a good sense of the keywords that are and aren’t worth spending your budget on. The middling keywords for which your ads show up consistently but never appear to acquire clicks illustrate opportunity. Zero in on producing a decent ad copy for such terms. Introduce a few modifications to your landing page. And double, triple-check your ad extensions. In case, after a couple of weeks, you still don’t get any clicks (or even worse, you get clicks but no conversions), eliminate those keywords.

Transferring your top-performing terms into their own ad campaign(s) will help you gain increased control over how much portion of your overall budget is used up for keywords that have performed well earlier. Wondering what the advantage is? The single converting term will no longer be thrown in with ten other keywords that do nothing except draining your budget.

Caution: By removing a keyword from its original ad group, you lose. Since, in this scenario, the Google Ad account is rather new, it sounds more logical to transfer your underperforming terms into new campaigns.

Now, the main question is: how exactly are you going to divide your paid search budget among these campaigns?

Ideally, you should spend most of your budget on those terms with the best shot at converting. Here branded keywords are the exception. Even though branded terms illustrate intent (familiarity), they have alow ceiling and don’t inevitably reflect “brand new” customers. Therefore, when it comes to your branded keywords while dominating your competition is crucial, owing to the relatively lower search volume and maximized Quality Scores, your overall Google ads budget should be most deliberately focused on those high-intent “buy now” and “product/service” terms.

Also, keep in mind that these categories are liquid (as mentioned earlier). While high-intent keywords should ideally be your top performers, that might not be the case always. Each ad account, each niche is different. Whenever in doubt, check out your existing data carefully and then make changes accordingly.

Key Takeaways:

Concentrate most of your budget on high-intent terms, including branded keywords.

Top-of-the-funnel keywords can dig a hole in your pocket. Remember, there are much better and affordable ways to reach a broader audience.

Fine-tune your budget allocation every week to secure maximum return on investment (ROI).

3. BUDGETING FOR EVERYTHING ELSE GOOGLE ADS OFFERS

While the search is the heart and soul of most Google Ads accounts, the platform does provide the advertisers with some other alternatives as well, including the display and remarketing (often via display, though remarketing on search can be fruitful too).

Based on your respective vertical, these options can complement or even entirely replace traditional search advertising. In any case, these can dramatically affect how you spend your money on Google Ads. To clarify, let’s dive into the details.

Display

While the clicks here are cheaper compared to traditional search, with the substantial drop off in direct conversions, the real question is: Is the GDN worth it?

Short answer – yes, a million times, YES!

Remember everything we talked about “intent” previously in this post? When using the GDN (Google Display Network), users viewing your ads don’t really have much of it. The display is much more similar to conventional advertising (imagine billboards) than traditional search, but of course, with the added advantages of on-demand analytics and better ad targeting.

Apart from remarketing, the GDN has three primary functions – generating brand awareness, displaying your product, and supporting a long sales process. It also makes loads of targeting options available to you. Wondering what’s the catch here?

However, the lack of conversions that can be directly attributable to the Google Display Network can make it hard to justify, particularly for small businesses that have limited budgets. With that said, there are still a few ways you can get started with GDN without setting your hard-earned money on fire.

When trying to dip your toes in the GDN, it is recommended to start with in-market audiences or managed ad placements. Long story short, this enables you to display banner creative on particular sites or to users whose web browsing history suggests that their interests align with what you are offering.

Once you get successful in this, you can then employ some other strategies and expand your Display budget to build the ideal complementary network strategy.

Remarketing

Remarketing is indeed a vital element of Google Ads. All businesses regardless of their vertical, can benefit from using it.

One of the best and easiest ways to ascertain your initial remarketing budget is to evaluate the percentage of total conversions originating from returning website visitors and then allocate the same percentage of your budget to remarketing. Sounds too abstract? No worries, let us take a look at an example.

Suppose you own an online clothing store. Last week, you collected 1000 clicks and sold 100 summer dresses on Google Ads. As per findings, 10 of those dresses were bought by returning site visitors. Now allocating 10% of your search budget to remarketing provides you with the opportunity to drive those remaining 900 non-converting visitors back to your site.

However, some account managers are against remarketing simply because, at the core, it means paying money to drive the same people back to your website numerous times. But don’t you think that it is better than the given people never converting or, even worse, purchasing something from your competitor instead? In addition to this, returning visitors tend to convert more than the new ones.

Key Takeaways:

Remarketing (dynamic remarketing in particular) isn’t optional. Make the most out of your budget by persuading more site visitors to convert.

Allow the GDN to take care of your top-of-the-funnel work so as to save your search budget for more qualified leads.

WRAPPING IT UP

Finally, this comprehensive guide to Google Ads budgeting has reached its end.

By now, you have efficiently figured out your starting point and consciously allocated spend to different search campaigns, and started expanding your overall budget to include everything that Google Ads offers you.

Apart from the eventual optimization, which is essential if you wish to get the most out of your Google Ads budget, you can also extend your advertising efforts to other platforms. Even though opting for Bing Ads sounds like the most logical step to take next, you may find Facebook or LinkedIn Ads pretty beneficial for your business as well.

That was all you needed to know about proper Google Ads budgeting. So what are you waiting for now? Go ahead and get started with it!

Happy advertising!

Hariom Balhara is an inventive person who has been doing intensive research in particular topics and writing blogs and articles for Tireless IT Services. Tireless IT Services is a Digital Marketing, SEO, SMO, PPC and Web Development company that comes with massive experiences. We specialize in digital marketing, Web Designing and development, graphic design, and a lot more.

SOURCE : Google Ads Budget

[internetandnetwork]

Top 3 SEO Content Writing Skills You Need to Succeed

We believe that in an SEO setting, every person needs to bring one or more natural skills to a role, but there are also skills that are mastered best on the job itself.

SEO content writers are familiar with this just as well as anybody else.

If you wish to enter the digital marketing industry as a content marketer, you may be a little surprised to know that powerful writing skills are essential but not enough.

When it comes to creating search-optimized content, it takes more than just good writing chops to succeed. There are many SEO concepts that content writers should be well-acquainted with if they plan to do their job nicely by creating content that ranks well for their clients or company.

In this blog, we will look at the top three skills every SEO content writer must have if they wish to succeed in this industry.

1. HAVING DIVERSE WRITING SKILLS

This one shouldn’t be that surprising. The first essential skill every SEO content writer must have is being able to master various writing styles.

When a content writer joins a company, there are good chances that their job responsibility will include creating content for all types of clients.

Employees working with a digital marketing agency are well aware that a content writer can start the day writing content for a beauty brand and end the day with a blog article for a funeral home.

While the content itself will be different for every client, what ‘really’ matters is the tone.

Readers cannot distinguish the tone from words themselves, but they can do so from the sound of the words when put together.

For instance, the beauty brand requires fun and lighthearted content, while the funeral home needs writing that follows a compassionate, simple, and serious tone.

A skilled content writer not only naturally knows what tone they should use and when, but they are also aware of how to use that tone in a way that engages the readers well.

While we are on the subject of engagement, the next skill is also utterly essential for any SEO content writer who wants to hit the big time.

2. UNDERSTANDING OF SEARCHER INTENT

The content writers that digital marketing companies hire don’t have to be exemplary masters in SEO in order to get successful in their jobs.

However, there is a way of writing content that perfectly goes in line with SEO in general, and that is understanding the search intent.

If SEO content writers want to make their work engaging for the readers, they’ll require more than just professional writing chops.

In order to be engaging, writers need to produce content that online readers are genuinely interested in reading instead of merely throwing topics at the wall and seeing if it sticks.

All SEO practitioners and other industry experts are now familiar with the different tools content writers utilize to find out what users are searching for on the web currently.

Knowing these tools is not the challenging part – it is using the data they give to build better content for the audience.

Once a content marketer becomes proficient in navigating the topic-generation features of such tools, it’s on him/her to convert those topics into lightning-rod content that honestly answers the questions the readers might have in mind.

These are the four main types of search intent content writers should bear in mind while writing:

Informational: When the readers want to know something

Transactional: When the readers want to purchase something

Navigational: When the readers want to visit a particular web page or website

Commercial investigation: When the readers are researching products/services they want to buy

Creating content for the different search intents calls for different approaches from the writer.

Simultaneously, every content piece is still meant to guide the readers toward buying what the client is offering.

For example, an information piece of content could be a list post of the 15 most delicious dishes from around the world that you must try.

Now in each point, the content writer can smoothly link to a product the client offers. Maybe the client owns a restaurant where the readers can go to try them out.

On the other hand, generating content for an eCommerce site would require a transactional content piece that is a little more direct about persuading the readers to purchase a product.

In addition to this, writers know that every type of content written for a specific context will use different keywords.

Based on your digital marketing agency’s setup, the content writers might be responsible for conducting this keyword research, or they can just get it done from the SEO specialists.

Nevertheless, in both cases, having the expertise to use the right keywords at the right places must be part of an SEO content writer’s toolkit.

For instance, an informational search phrase could be something like “top car brands,” whereas a transactional search term might be “cars for sale online.”

A skilled content writer will know how to incorporate these search terms within their writing naturally so that it answers what the readers want to find.

3. CREATING CONTENT FOR TOPICS OVER KEYWORDS

The third essential skill every competent SEO content writing must have is the ability to produce content for topics over keywords.

In case the writer is just getting started with SEO content marketing, they need to know the history of keywords in SEO.

Gone are the days when people wrote content for keywords because back then, in the late 1990s and early 2000s, Google gave more importance to keywords.

In fact, people began using black hat SEO tactics to stuff keywords into their content forcefully.

However, since all this contributes to poor user experiences, doing so today will earn you a penalty.

Things have changed now. In order to get their content to rank well in the SERPs, SEO content writers need to focus on writing for topics over keywords.

Sure, keywords have their own crucial place, but if you focus too much on shoehorning them in your content piece, it won’t read well to the people, and in turn, Google (or any other search engine) won’t rank it well in the search results.

Therefore, content writers must give their best to make their content piece authentic and relevant to the initial search query.

They need to focus on providing the most accurate answer to the readers’ actual question in as much detail as possible.

Writers can also go through the search results pages to see what type of content is ranking already and then think about making their content even better to help it acquire the #1 ranking position.

WRAPPING IT UP

There’s nothing more worth appreciating than when a professional writer, who perhaps had no knowledge about SEO formerly, wants to break into the SEO industry.

However, we can’t downplay the fact that to make it big as a professional SEO content writer, it takes potent writing skills. But if you focus on polishing your skillset from the very beginning of your journey towards becoming an SEO content writer, you’ll already be ahead in your game.

Now that you know the three most crucial skills you need to have to become a successful SEO content writer, you can set out to learn and master them.

Happy writing!

Hariom Balhara is an inventive person who has been doing intensive research in particular topics and writing blogs and articles for Tireless IT Services. Tireless IT Services is a Digital Marketing, SEO, SMO, PPC and Web Development company that comes with massive experiences. We specialize in digital marketing, Web Designing and development, graphic design, and a lot more.

SOURCE : SEO Content Writing

[internetandnetwork]

Importance of Python for Cybersecurity Professionals

Python is one of the most popularly used programming languages today. This simple object-oriented language can be quickly learned and understood by beginners and skilled developers. It is currently being used across different areas ranging from data science to cybersecurity. In this blog, we will talk about the benefits of using Python language for cybersecurity and why it is crucial for the career growth of cybersecurity professionals.

PYTHON LANGUAGE FOR CYBERSECURITY

Contrary to other programming languages, Python is straightforward and easy to understand. It has an easy syntax, and new web developers or people who are just stepping into the cybersecurity industry can rapidly catch it. Moreover, Python also happens to be a favorite language among experienced and skilled developers as it can include numerous functionalities. Python scripts can be created quickly, and the simple syntax helps cybersecurity specialists spot and fix the blunders in the code instantly.

Python sticks to a clean and clear-cut execution process and does not leave much space for cyber attackers or hackers to target data or devices. Plus, developing and incorporating new and separate applications into older elements.

BENEFITS OF PYTHON PROGRAMMING IN CYBERSECURITY

Debugging/Troubleshooting Made Easier

Python uses minimal code, making it easier for the programmers to debug the mistakes while simultaneously minimizing the risk of language complications and issues. Moreover, its simple design and user-friendliness also improve its readability. This makes troubleshooting more manageable and less time-consuming. Plus, Python also incorporates an in-built debugger known as PDB, which carries out all the primary functions.

Automatic Memory Management

Python also has a built-in memory management tool, which is undoubtedly another significant bonus point for programmers. This takes a great deal of burden off the shoulders of programmers and users, meaning they won’t have to worry about memory management, including elements like memory allocation, partitioning, and caching.

Open Source Programming Language

Python is designed as a free and open-source language, meaning anyone can help in improving it. Plus, it is available to users to download for free. This is the reason why it is one of the most favored programming languages among a massive number of large web development organizations.

Easy to Learn

Compared to other programming languages like C++ and Java, Python is undeniably the most comfortable and easiest language to learn and implement. It has been designed in this way on purpose. Coding is much easier in Python. When stacked against other programming languages, Python has a much simpler syntax, and it also uses less code.

REASONS WHY PYTHON IS CRUCIAL FOR CYBERSECURITY PROFESSIONALS

Python programming language is crucial for cybersecurity professionals since it can carry out numerous significant security functions, including penetration tests, malware analysis, scanning, etc. Its simplicity and ease of use make it an ideal programming language for everything – from testing microchips to developing video games. A wide range of security tools is written in Python language because of its easily accessible and understandable nature. Let’s take a look at some crucial points to see why Python plays such a vital role in the field of cybersecurity.

Social Media Data Extraction

Programmers can use Python scripts to download real-time data from different social media channels. There are several extensions and modules in Python that can be interfaced with various platforms, including WhatsApp, Facebook, Twitter, etc.

It Is Flexible

Python’s ease of use makes it easier for programmers to build new applications in a faster way. Moreover, it can also develop and improve modules in C++, Java, and ASP.NET. All these features make it much easier to respond to cybersecurity risks.

Packet Sniffing

Packet sniffing is broadly wiretapping a system. It can be avoided by either using a third-party tool or writing a simple Python script to achieve similar results.

Network Port Scanning

Generally, third-party tools are used to implement network port scanning. However, this can also be done without them by simply taking advantage of the Python socket programming instead.

Quick Scripts Development

Cybersecurity specialists can build solutions using Python with simple and lesser code while consuming the least amount of time. Additionally, it also allows cybersecurity professionals to spot errors and fix the problems quickly.

Extensive Library Support

One of the many reasons why Python is the most sought-after programming language today is its vast library of modules. It lets cybersecurity specialists access cybersecurity analysis and penetration testing tools easily every day.

Speed and Productivity

The minimal, simple, and object-oriented codes of Python helps increase the productivity of the programmers. It also has robust integrating and unit testing framework abilities to boost implementation speed.

Scalability

Python programming language is highly scalable, and its simplicity and flexibility can secure all applications.

Multifaceted Development for Cybersecurity

Python language is a bonanza for cybersecurity professionals since it can carry out any task (that can be done using coding) with simple and minimal code without consuming too much time. In the field of cybersecurity, Python programming language is used for various purposes, including malware analysis, network scanning, port scanning, sending and decoding packets, host discovery, accessing servers, and much more.

WRAPPING IT UP

We hope by now you have gotten a pretty clear understanding of the importance of Python in cybersecurity. It is incredibly beneficial in this field as it can perform a wide range of cybersecurity functions like malware analysis and scanning. So keeping these perks in mind, you can hire a python developer to secure your application. It will help keep your website secure and ensure its fast performance and help you respond quickly to any cyberattack.

Hariom Balhara is an inventive person who has been doing intensive research in particular topics and writing blogs and articles for Tireless IT Services. Tireless IT Services is a Digital Marketing, SEO, SMO, PPC, and Web Development company that comes with massive experiences.  We specialize in digital marketing, Web Designing and development, graphic design, and a lot more.

SOURCE : Importance of Python for Cybersecurity Professionals

[internetandnetwork]

WhatsApp Rolls Out New Privacy Policy: Here’s What It Means for You

Social media giant Facebook acquired WhatsApp back in 2014, and it slowly changed the way the platform accessed user data. And now Facebook is displaying a “take it or leave it” stance to the WhatsApp users with the newly updated privacy policy.

Earlier this week, users from around the world started seeing a popup notification regarding privacy policy and terms of service update on their WhatsApp, and most users had no idea what this was all about. With this latest update, the social networking company has expanded the way WhatsApp will share its user data with other Facebook-owned platforms and third-party apps as well.

And that’s not all. This update also arrived with the condition that if a person denies sharing their data with the company, i.e., Facebook, they need to leave the messaging platform.

These new terms of service will come into effect next month, on 8th February.

WHAT DOES THIS NEW PRIVACY POLICY PUT AT STAKE?

WhatsApp will continue to hold on to data, including the information of whether the user is online or not, frequency as well as the duration of their online activities, and group names and icons and status.

Apart from this, the messaging platform will also accumulate data from the new payment feature, which includes processing method, shipment data, and transactions. Beyond this, the company will also gather and share information such as location, operating system, browser details, device model, and battery level.

A PRIVACY LABEL U-TURN

Last year, back in July, WhatsApp provided its users with the option to “opt out” on sharing their usage data. In its earlier privacy policy version, the company said that the existing WhatsApp users could choose not to share their account information with Facebook to enhance Facebook ads and product experiences. The notification also further added that users who accept the Privacy Policy and Terms of Use will still have an additional 30-day period to make this decision.

However, coming back to this new update, the platform has wholly deleted this clause making it compulsory for the WhatsApp users to fetch and share their account information with other Facebook-owned as well as third-party apps.

IMPACT OF THIS NEW UPDATE ON USERS

Back in 2009, WhatsApp was launched as a free, cross-messaging platform service. And in just four years of its existence, the platform successfully earned more than 400 million active users per month. After its massive success in the social media world, in 2014, the social networking giant Facebook bought WhatsApp. Slowly Facebook entirely changed how WhatsApp accessed its users’ data. With this latest privacy policy and terms of use update, Facebook is now displaying a “take it or leave it” stance to the WhatsApp users.

These new terms of use will allow Facebook-owned and other related third-party apps to abuse and cash in on the user data, which includes users’ personal data, violating people’s privacy for their commercial gain.

WhatsApp’s new privacy policy is short of clarity, and it fails to clear up the way data from Facebook, Instagram, and now WhatsApp is being merged and to whom this data is being made available by the social networking company.

CONCLUSION

An investigation will most probably help people to find all the answers to their questions with regard to this new data collection policy of Facebook. However, the social networking company hasn’t responded to the questions of the joint parliamentary committee in regard to its practices, which makes it more challenging to determine where this data sharing problem currently stands. Moreover, the absence of a data protection committee in India intensifies this problem all the more so.

Hariom Balhara is an inventive person who has been doing intensive research in particular topics and writing blogs and articles for Tireless IT Services. Tireless IT Services is a Digital Marketing, SEO, SMO, PPC, and Web Development company that comes with massive experiences.  We specialize in digital marketing, Web Designing and development, graphic design, and a lot more.

SOURCE : WhatsApp Privacy

[internetandnetwork]

Black Hat SEO: What It Is and Why You Should Avoid It

Take a trip down memory lane and think about how things were ten years ago. When people incorrectly presumed that SEO was nothing but a manipulative marketing maneuver that was all about deceiving the search engine’s algorithm and using strategies to trick Google (or any other search engine) into thinking that your website satisfies the search query best.

This isn’t the way things should have ever been, and SEO professionals should have always focused on building a website that actually is the best result for a specific query instead of just giving a false impression that it is.

However, when it came to detecting web spam, Google’s algorithm wasn’t really that advanced back then.

Taking advantage of the situation, many SEO practitioners were abundantly using black hat SEO techniques to rank their websites, but fortunately, things have drastically changed.

In this blog, we will discuss what black hat SEO is, what risks are associated with it and which tactics you should steer clear of if you don’t want to come up against Google’s algorithm and Webmaster Quality Guidelines. It’s time to dive into the details.

What Is Black Hat SEO

Black hat SEO involves using aggressive techniques that contravenes the guidelines of the search engines to rank a website on the SERPs. Simply put, black hat SEO tactics are used to manipulate the search engine’s algorithm to boost a website’s ranking in the search results.

Search engines, including Google and Bing, have been very clear on the types of practices that violate their rules and the potential outcomes of using them despite that. Practicing black hat SEO strategies can result in your site getting penalized, whether manually or algorithmically, which will lead to ranking lower in the SERPs and most probably a sharp decline in the organic traffic.

Risks of Black Hat SEO

Using black hat SEO techniques to improve your website’s ranking wrongly involves some significant risks, which is why most SEO professionals decide that they are better off without such practices. Most of the SEO industry considers these approaches to be utterly immoral, and practicing them is strictly frowned upon.

However, if truth be told, there has, are, and will always be a tiny percentage of SEOs who would want to cheat the algorithm and try to accelerate their website’s organic success. But even if the black hat SEO tactics do benefit your site, the results are usually ephemeral.

Let’s discuss the risks of using black hat SEO tactics and the reasons why you should steer clear of them.

3 Top Reasons to Avoid Black Hat SEO

Just out of curiosity, some people might still wonder what can possibly happen if they use black hat SEO to rank their website. To answer this and understand why you need to avoid using such techniques strictly, let’s discuss the worst-case scenarios.

Google’s Webmaster Guidelines has been very clear about the consequences of violating the rules. If you delve deeper, you can see they’ve clearly stated that such practices may result in your website getting wholly removed from Google Search Index. Otherwise, your site may end up triggering algorithmic spam action, or Google itself may issue a manual action when a human reviewer ascertains that the site is contravening the guidelines. Moreover, the search engine also states that a website impacted by such spam actions might no longer be visible on Google’s search results or any of its partner websites.

Although SEO is all about improving your site’s organic search visibility and traffic, using black hat SEO tactics can actually cause the opposite. To help you understand its impact, we have broken down this further and presented three key reasons why you need to keep away from black hat SEO.

Negatively Impacts Your Search Visibility and Rankings

First things first, the main reason you should refrain from using black hat SEO tactics is that it will eventually cause your website to lose its search rankings, visibility, and traffic.

Needless to say, but when a site loses its visibility, rankings, and traffic, consequently, conversions and revenue will decline too.

This alone can mean a business’s revenue loss, which can further result in job losses and even shutting down the company. In the best-case scenario, a sharp drop in organic traffic and visibility will mean that the business needs to supplement it with a greater investment into paid media such as PPC.

This decline in your site performance after using black hat tactics can be due to either manual spam action or algorithmic filtering.

Drives Short-Term Results

In cases where using these manipulative tactics actually succeed in increasing a website’s performance and organic rankings, these are rarely preserved.

Although it may take a while before Google finds out that a website is engaging in unethical practices, losing your visibility and traffic is inescapable once it does.

The only thing which is worse than struggling to make a website rank at all in the search results is perhaps seeing a site’s rankings and traffic unnaturally bumped up only to decline abruptly any moment now. Companies need uniformity, which isn’t something black hat SEO can offer.

Delivers a Poor User Experience

Over time, SEOs have begun to realize that all this time, Google wasn’t just trying to rank websites based on who has optimized their site the best for search. Instead, it also considers which websites offer a decent or at least satisfactory user experience that the audience is happy with.

Therefore, SEO professionals must take account of the users’ experience on their website and strive to offer the best content and user experience. But the black hat SEO does the exact opposite of this. Those techniques optimize a website for search engines (at least according to their understanding of what the search engines want to see) instead of users. And this alone can be troublesome.

Trust plays a great role in search success. If you prioritize search engines over users, then it is most likely that your site’s ability to drive traffic, rank higher, and generate conversions will be substantially limited.

9 Black Hat SEO Techniques You Must Avoid

If you have just stepped into the SEO world, it is usually challenging to determine which strategies you should use and which ones you should strictly avoid.

While a lot of SEO basics are well-defined white hat SEO tactics, numerous more advanced strategies need more attention to detail.

However, you must ensure that you are following the right direction. Few recommended techniques you read on blogs and social media or from your knowns might sound like more “advanced” tactics, but actually, they’re just ushering you towards a black hat SEO approach.

The more familiar you are with the strategies that can spell danger for your website, the easier it will be for you to identify them and keep away from them as far as possible. Here are the nine black hat SEO techniques that you should avoid using to make sure you don’t go up against Google’s Webmaster Guidelines.

Excessive Keyword Stuffing

Repetition of your web page’s primary target keyword(s) isn’t going to help you rank higher in the SERPs. This practice, known as keyword stuffing, will probably lead to the opposite.

SEOs practicing black hat tactics will sometimes try to manipulate a website’s ranking by incorporating one or more target keywords peculiarly within a page. Keyword stuffing typically happens in random sections that stand outside of the main content or within paras that sound illogical when someone reads it out loud.

Using Duplicate or Automatically Generated Content

Producing high-quality, engaging content sure isn’t a child’s play, but we just can’t hide from the fact that it still is one of the top-ranking factors of Google.

One of the most commonly used black hat SEO tactics is to use automatically generated content to rank on search engines for a vast number of keywords without having to take the time to create original and valuable content, for example, using the same content by just changing the location name for different location pages across the website.

Make sure that you take out some time to build SEO-friendly unique content to avoid troubles caused due to low quality or duplicate content.

Adding Hidden Text

Text that uses the same color as the background placed off the screen or at the back of an image uses CSS to conceal it from the site visitors or uses a zero font size to become invisible is known as hidden text. This is deceitful, but at times it is used for keyword stuffing.

This isn’t applicable for the text in accordion, tabs, or which is loaded dynamically using JavaScript. Without a doubt, it is not advisable to use hidden text in your site because web crawlers have become far more advanced now, and they quickly realize that you are trying to stuff keywords.

Creating Gateway/Doorway Pages

Building pages that target a particular search query with content that is only meant to serve as a funnel to one page is deemed as the contravention of Google’s guidelines. Such pages are known as gateway or doorway pages.

Every content that you publish on your website should have a clearly defined purpose. You should not just go around building pages exclusively for the sake of ranking for somewhat irrelevant keywords, For example, building web pages to target geographical locations using keywords without your business even being present there. Another example is creating pages for the sake of ranking instead of satisfying the needs of the users.

Start developing content for humans, not for search engines.

Cloaking

Cloaking is another deceptive strategy that includes presenting different content or URLs to site visitors and search engines, virtually catering different experiences to both.

This is clearly a manipulative attempt to rank a web page based on the content developed for search engines while leading the visitors to someplace different. This practice again is a clear-cut violation of Google’s guidelines.

You should focus all your efforts on building the best possible experience for your user, and eventually, the search engine will love your page too.

Link Schemes

Link schemes are the most common black hat SEO strategy, and this is where the most confusion stems.

Now while other things such as creating original content that offers value to users and not using hidden text on the site might come across as common sense to a lot of marketers, link building is the place where things get a bit more complicated.

Links serve as the editorial vote of trust given by one site to another, and therefore, it is crucial that you ethically “earn” those links. Here are a few techniques that you should strictly avoid:

Sponsored or paid links that do not include attributes such as rel = “nofollow” or rel = “sponsored”

Exchanging too many links

Comment spam in blogs

Forum spam

Automated link building

Links using exact match or commercial anchor text

Large-scale article marketing or guest posting campaigns

Misusing Structured Data and Rich Snippets

Structured data helps describe organizations, relationships, and actions online, and misusing or exploiting such markup is just one of the many widely used black hat SEO strategies.

Typically, this means utilizing structured data to send out wrong information. For instance, a lot of marketers try to build more favorable structured data for their website by writing fake reviews and 5-star ratings to increase their ranking in the SERPs and boast a higher click-through rate.

Just like the other techniques in this list, this too is a deceptive practice that you should steer clear from.

Deceptive Redirects

Whether you are updating an old web page to a new link or URL or getting ready for a website migration, using redirects is a fundamental part of SEO. And we assure you that there is nothing wrong with using redirects; in fact, it is an effective way of making sure that your website is well-organized and easy to access for users as well as web crawlers. So you might be wondering how this made its way into this list?

Well, just like cloaking, black hat SEOs position sneaky redirects to cheat search engines, and present content that is different from the content displayed to the site visitors. Often the search engine falling into this trap indexes the original web page while the users are directed to a different URL destination. Google’s guidelines particularly mention deceptive redirects as a manipulative black hat SEO technique that contravenes its guidelines.

Using Negative SEO

Last but not least, it won’t be appropriate to presume that all black hat SEO practitioners use these deceptive strategies to rank their websites.

Some of them also use negative SEO to try and decrease the rankings of their competitor sites. Or phrasing it in better terms, black hat SEOs use manipulative techniques that contravene the search engine’s guidelines on someone else’s website instead of their own in an attempt to get it penalized.

Usually, this involves directing heaps of unnatural links to their competitor’s website, hoping that the search engine will spot it and penalize them for the same.

While this practice isn’t very common considering how smart Google’s algorithm is becoming day-by-day at neglecting links emerging from such attacks, it is crucial to keep your eyes open and analyze your link profile on a regular basis to make sure someone’s not trying to attack your website.

There are plenty of online tools that you can use to keep an eye on your link profile.

How to Report Black Hat SEO

While reading all about the black hat SEO, the dangers of using it, and strategies you should avoid using, it must have occurred to you that what should you do when you discover that a competitor is using these deceptive tactics and still not being penalized?

Well, when you find that they are violating the guidelines in any way, you can report them as spam to Google. Now, although reporting a website won’t lead to the search engine taking direct action right away, you are actually helping to improve algorithmic spam detection.

Being an ethical SEO professional, it is undoubtedly very upsetting to see a website deceiving the algorithm and still getting away with their wrongdoings. While Google is getting better every day at restricting such websites from acquiring top-ranking positions in the search results, there is no running away from the fact that there are still numerous sites that are performing well by leveraging black hat SEO strategies.

However, as we discussed earlier, sooner or later, these websites will be caught by the algorithm or human reviewers and end up getting their sites penalized for good. All it needs is one new update, and it’s over for them.

Wrapping Up

The main takeaway from this blog is that any website using black hat SEO techniques to improve their rankings will eventually fall foul of Google’s guidelines and jeopardize their site.

Even though black hat SEO is not being used as commonly as it used to back then, some SEOs still exist who follow this path or make their clients believe that these strategies are ethical while in reality, those tactics are clearly violating the search engine’s guidelines.

Concluding, when you are trying to get your own site to rank on the SERPs, never ever go down this way and use black hat SEO. If you find yourself struggling to achieve a better ranking position, learn the strategies that actually work in favor of your website without contravening the guidelines. Or you can take the easier way out and hire a reputed and established agency to help you with your site’s SEO “ethically.”

Hariom Balhara is an inventive person who has been doing intensive research in particular topics and writing blogs and articles for Tireless IT Services. Tireless IT Services is a digital marketing, SEO, SMO, PPC, and web development company that comes with massive experiences.  We specialize in digital marketing, web designing and development, graphic design, and a lot more.

SOURCE : Black Hat SEO: What It Is and Why You Should Avoid It

[internetandnetwork]

6 Ways to Win in Competitive and Expensive PPC Environments

When you work in different vertical markets, there is something you will learn instantly about CPC – it differs fiercely.

For example, the cost per click for a sweatshirt will be completely different in comparison to searches for lawn care services.

Usually, if what you are advertising does not cost much, the average CPC will be low.

It’s truly the work of economics for retailers and services – every sale is worth only so much, and costs that don’t align with that are illogical to spend.

In short, all clothing retailers will max out around the same scopes since their margins are not utterly different from each other. And this is likely to set the price for the specific vertical market.

Nevertheless, this raises problems for cases where the cost per click is higher: each click is important and costs a great deal.

Numerous retailers are happy to pay those prices either because what they are offering is worth that money or they know that they are going to recover it gradually because of the customer lifetime value.

There are so many brands competing in insanely high CPC environments and working in-house to do it currently.

On some days, it’s like an all-or-nothing sort of gambling, but good ROI does not necessarily have to be difficult to catch.

What follows is a list of six ways that will help boost your ROI when your costs begin breaking into a sweat and help you win in aggressive and costly PPC environments.

Establish Proper Tracking

Seems like a piece of cake, isn’t it?

It’s shocking to see brands competing in competitive and costly environments and still not tracking the phone calls triggered by their ongoing PPC campaigns.

Features such as call tracking used to be a little too complex for local businesses back in the day. From coding to additional subscription fees, there was too much hassle involved, and considering the low CPCs at that time, it just didn’t seem worthwhile.

However, things have changed now. Industries such as real estate, legal, or hotels and travel can usually pay above $100 per click, meaning they may lose a great deal of money if they don’t use a platform to track calls.

Today, just a direct signup and a snippet on your site can offer you a fair amount of insights into where those costly leads are coming from.

Doing so can help you focus your marketing budget on areas where it is best spent while freeing up your money from fumbling campaigns.

Pay Attention to Keyword Matching

A lot has changed in the keyword matching world ever since Google made Exact Match… not really exact.

You need to look at everything when it comes to the search queries and the way the search engine matches your keywords to them.

Merely checking your broad match or modified broad match isn’t good enough anymore.

So, if you want to compel the search queries to match to a particular ad group, then you need to put in more effort now than ever.

Like it or not but these days, Google takes heaps of liberties with your keyword matching, like replacing terms with the ones it thinks are similar.

To complicate things furthermore, Google has also stopped displaying all the search terms or queries that the campaigns are matching for to the advertisers.

This means it has become even more crucial now to be as watchful as possible about your data.

Launch With Bold Negative Keywords List

While this used to be restricted for Broad Match only, the current problems pointed out in the section above have made it all the more crucial.

With Google’s Exact Match taking more liberties than before and a lack of transparency into your keyword matching, determining negatives right from the start can help diminish their impacts.

The big thing to keep in mind here is that a single irrelevant click may cost you upwards of $100!

So, to steer clear of such losses, the ideal thing to do is use keyword research reversedly to discover terms that you don’t want to be triggering your campaigns.

You can use the Google Keyword Planner to explore the relevant terms it suggests. Besides this, you may also want to take the help of Google’s suggestions that pop up when you enter a term in the search bar. Go through the list and see if it suggests any long-tail terms that you strictly want to avoid.

For instance, a lot of businesses exclude queries containing “jobs” because the user is seeking employment; they are not a prospect.

Moreover, you can also choose to exclude queries like “customer service number” or “login” that indicate the user is an existing customer just looking for information.

Assess Device Relevance for Conversions

Sometimes people tend to show behavioral differences while using different devices such as laptops, tablets, or smartphones. However, in a high-spending environment, it is not persistent.

Let’s understand this better by taking a look at two examples:

Let’s assume you reside in Connecticut, and suddenly, your air conditioner stops working during the month of July in the scorching heat.

Now, HVAC clicks are notably high-priced, and well, one can easily see why – for starters, when someone searches for their service, they need them NOW, and secondly, the job is worth good money.

So, imagine their situation. How do you think the majority of those people are performing searches?

Well, they are most likely using their phone while trying to make their AC work magically instead of sitting on their laptop and doing in-depth research.

In such cases, mobile users are invaluable for the business, mainly because they will most likely click on the “call now” CTA button from your ad directly and may not inevitably visit websites first simply because they need an immediate solution to their problem!

Now let’s take a look at an entirely different example of a B2B (business-to-business company).

When it comes to cost per click, a lot of B2B verticals are also very pricey, but the reasons are different in their case. They are costly deals that may take anywhere between a couple of months to a few years to close!

Sure they are worth a lot, but of course, the reason is different than our HVAC example.

What do you think – how are most of these users researching for a costly solution?

On their phones? – Probably, no.

In cases like these, desktop users are likely to be considered more valuable as compared to mobile users.

In order to make your bid strategy effective, you must understand where your most conversion actions come from.

Last but not least, be sure to pay heed to all your data not just in Google Ads but also in any other Customer Relationship Management software (CRMs) that you may use to grasp the buying cycle of users and their devices completely.

Use Remarketing to Drive Lower Click Costs

Do you know there is a way to display your ads for highly competitive keywords but probably for less money? Want to know what it is?

Using Remarketing Lists for Search Ads (RLSA) is the answer you’re looking for right now!

Bidding on keywords in an open auction is no less than going on a war against all your competitors.

However, it also means that there could be searches pointing to a potential customer (for example, information searches like “what is…” or “how to…”, so an expensive cost per click for where they’re standing in their customer journey sounds quite illogical.

Using RLSA is an excellent way to remain present as users perform searches without having to holler for them in the open auction.

Similar to display remarketing, in RLSA, too, you can apply a list of customers of your choice and display your ad only to people who especially search for those high competition keywords.

This helps keep your brand consistently on the top-of-mind of your customers but at a relatively lower cost.

You can apply RLSA at the Campaign or Ad Group level. Pick your audiences and “Targeting” as your setting. This will make sure that any keywords in that particular Ad Group display only to the list of audiences you have stated. You can also set different bids for these audiences according to whatever suits your metrics best.

Use Audiences to Bid Based on Relevance

This strategy is quite the same as RLSA discussed in the previous section. The only difference between them is that in this one, rather than using your own customer lists, you use Google’s.

For instance, if you know that your ideal customer tends to be into home renovations or a food lover, you can make sure that only users that fall into this category or belong to this audience group see your ads when they search.

This works just like the RLSA function, but here you get the options to choose “Targeting” or “Observation.”

If you select “Targeting,” only the users who fall into your selected group of audiences will be able to see your ads.

On the other hand, if you select “Observation,” your ads will be displayed to all the users, but you will be able to see the behavior of users who specifically fall into those audiences.

Based on your results, you can also make bid adjustments.

Conclusion

The bid environments will continue to remain the same highly competitive as it is now or maybe even increase, but there’s no going back. With every passing day, we are only seeing the CPCs increase in developing industries as they evolve.

While PPC professionals have criticized Google Ads a lot for deleting some of the controls that they used to enjoy earlier, there is still a little maneuvering that they can do to mitigate the losses in such competitive environments where there is a lot on stake. This is an excellent way to get ahead of your competitors too.

Using the data you have in the right way can help you improve your targeting, reduce your expenses, and help your campaigns perform better while yielding great results.

Moreover, you can combat the lack of transparency to a great extent by utilizing research tools available in Google’s very own inventory.

Typically, getting better results is an outcome of the mixed efforts that you put into launching and running a campaign. Implement these six ways to increase your return on investment (ROI), cut your costs, and win in this competitive PPC environment successfully.

Hariom Balhara is an inventive person who has been doing intensive research in particular topics and writing blogs and articles for Tireless IT Services. Tireless IT Services is a digital marketing, SEO, SMO, PPC, and web development company that comes with massive experiences.  We specialize in digital marketing, web designing and development, graphic design, and a lot more.

SOURCE : 6 Ways to Win in Competitive and Expensive PPC Environments

[internetandnetwork]

Twitter Is All Set to Relaunch Account Verifications Next Year

After holding back the account verification process for more than three years now, every social media lover’s favorite app to express their takes publicly, Twitter is now ready to relaunch public verifications early next year.

The popular social network has announced that they are officially planning to bring back the account verifications program in early 2021; however, the relaunch will be accompanied by a significant revamp to the process.

Taking a trip down memory lane, Twitter had set the platform on fire after it verified the account of Jason Kessler, who was one of the organizers of the Charlottesville rally, back in 2017. It received instant backlash from the infuriated users. Later Twitter Support account sent out a tweet clarifying that their action of verifying the account was in no way meant to support its tweets. But some users seem to have taken it the wrong way, while the blue verified badge is just meant to portray the authenticity of an account of public interest. The company acknowledged their contribution to creating this confusion and decided to suspend all their account verifications until they resolve this.

Well, we guess now they are ready to do so. The company intends to reintroduce the program early next year, which provides them with ample time to collect feedback from users about how they should handle the public verification process in order to update their new policy. Twitter has stated this clearly in their recent official announcement.

The platform has also presented the very first draft of their new account verifications policy before the users, identifying the six types of accounts that are eligible to be verified on Twitter.

Types of Accounts That Qualify for Verification

Here are the six types of user accounts that qualify for verification:

Government

Companies, Brands, and Organizations (including Non-Profit Organizations)

News

Entertainment

Sports

Activists, Organizers, and other influential individuals

The criteria for getting verified and receiving a blue badge on Twitter is pretty simple – your account should be notable and active, as the company mentions in its new policy’s initial draft. While falling into one of these aforementioned account categories defines your notability, being active on the platform means your account should fulfill these criteria:

It should be complete, which means it must have your profile name, bio, and profile and cover picture.

You must have logged in to your Twitter account at least once in the last six months.

It should have your confirmed email address or phone number.

It should not have been found in violation of Twitter rules or received a 12 hours or 7 days lockout in the last six months duration for the same. However, successful appeals are an exception in this case.

Types of Accounts That Don’t Qualify for Verification

Twitter has also made it clear that what types of accounts won’t qualify to get verified. Any account that meets any one or more of these criteria will be considered ineligible for verification:

Parody, commentary, newsfeed, and fan accounts

Representing a pet or fictional character (unless the account is associated with a verified entertainment production house or recognized brand, company, or organization)

Engagement of the account in severe contraventions of Twitter’s Platform Manipulation and Spam policy (for example, sale or purchase of followers)

Accounts representing groups or individuals affiliated with coordinated harmful activities or hateful content

Accounts That Might Lose Their Verification Status

Last but not least, Twitter holds the authority to cancel an account’s verification status and remove their blue verified badge at any time without even giving notice if they are found to be doing any one of these:

If the account changes their Twitter handle or becomes incomplete or inactive

The individual no longer holds the position for which they were initially verified or no longer meets the platform’s verification criteria

The account is impersonating or misleading people on purpose by changing their bio or display name

If the account is found to committing serious contraventions that lead to immediate account suspension

The account is repeatedly posting tweets that violate Twitter guidelines

However, the policy also clarifies that the cancellation of the verified status won’t be made automatically; instead, it will be evaluated on a case-by-case basis.

Conclusion

This is only the initial draft of Twitter’s new verification policy, and the company has shared it to receive feedback from the public. Therefore, the policies and rules mentioned in this post might change before the platform publishes the final copy.

Anyone can submit their feedback by either participating in their official survey or simply tweeting their feedback using the hashtag #VerificationFeedback. The company said they would be closely monitoring this hashtag to see what their audience thinks about this new policy. The public feedback period will last for about two weeks before the company reviews all the feedback and introduces the final policy. Users will be able to apply for their account verification from the next year.

So go ahead and share your thoughts on this with Twitter!

Hariom Balhara is an inventive person who has been doing intensive research in particular topics and writing blogs and articles for Tireless IT Services. Tireless IT Services is a digital marketing, SEO, SMO, PPC, and web development company that comes with massive experiences.  We specialize in digital marketing, web designing and development, graphic design, and a lot more.

SOURCE : Twitter Is All Set to Relaunch Account Verifications Next Year

[internetandnetwork]

YouTube Introduces Audio-Only Ads to Target Music & Podcast Listeners

The second largest search engine cum social media platform, YouTube has recently launched audio-only ads to match the multiple ways in which consumers engage with its platform. It has launched this new audio-based ad format to reach users who use their platform to play music and podcasts.

Although audio-only ads might seem to be a bit of a misfit for a popular ‘video’ streaming platform specializing in videos, YouTube claims that today people are consuming more audio-centric content.

Being the first-ever ad format that YouTube has introduced without any video component, this is uncharted waters for the company.

While some businesses might be familiar with the audio ads if they have run a podcast campaign before, for a lot of YouTube advertisers, this might be the first time.

The company highlights how these audio ads are the ideal fit for music channels; however, we can clearly see its immense potential to engage various audiences.

So let’s see what these audio ads are all about and their use cases.

What Are YouTube Audio Ads

Audio ads can be defined by a voice-over communicating the message while a static image or simple animation is shown on the screen.

After performing months of alpha testing, YouTube discovered that a vast majority of calculated audio-only ad campaigns stimulated a considerable boost in brand awareness.

YouTube audio ads are now in the beta phase. They are available in the auction on Google Ads as well as Display & Video 360 on a cost per thousand basis.

Just like YouTube video campaigns, audio campaigns will also offer the same ad targeting options, bidding strategies, and the ability to measure brand lift to the advertisers.

What Audiences Advertisers Can Reach With YouTube Audio Ads

Mainly, YouTube is convincing the advertisers about audio ads by stressing its potential to reach music and podcast listening audiences.

Since people are spending more time in their homes currently, music video streaming is at its peak, according to the company itself. The majority of YouTube users who log in to the platform to listen to music consume more than ten minutes of music content on a daily basis. As per reports, most searches were related to music among the list of top searches on YouTube, including searches about songs, albums, artists, bands, etc.

Besides studio recordings, YouTube is increasingly becoming the users’ favorite destination to catch live music performances.

As the in-person events and fests continue to be called off due to the global pandemic, music lovers are relying on platforms such as YouTube to get their dose of concerts.

This summer, event organizers organized virtual music festivals on YouTube by bringing star-studded lineups.

Even now, when the festival season is slowing down, you can still spot famous artists giving live performances on YouTube from the comfort of their homes.

A lot of users like to let these videos stream in the background while they continue with some other work enjoying the music (like people used to do with radio stations), which means audio-only ads won’t feel unsuitable or inappropriate.

For audio ads, music and podcast would obviously be the perfect fit, but these are not the only options advertisers have.

Another Potential Use Case For YouTube Audio Ads

In today’s world, after a long tiresome day, what people seek the most is peace. There is no doubt that music is increasingly becoming popular across YouTube, but this isn’t the only form of audio-based content that people are consuming on this platform.

According to a study, the term “ASMR” is among the most popular YouTube searches, in fact, the third most popular search worldwide and one of the biggest trends on this platform. ASMR (Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response) videos help in visual relaxation and releasing stress.

However, there’s a catch. Incorporating ads into ASMR videos can be a bit of a challenge as these are usually created to help the listeners relax or sleep. And what’s more invasive than a loud advertisement in between an ASMR video, disturbing you right at the moment you are about to fall asleep peacefully. Well, this is the reason why most ASMR channels choose to withdraw from mid-roll advertisements.

However, what we think is that ASMR channels would be more open to audio-only mid-roll advertisements if advertisers deliver them in a soft-spoken form.

There is a great potential for it there since it is pretty evident that in comparison to other YouTube videos, ASMR videos still remain under-monetized despite their popularity. So, advertisers who are looking forward to running YouTube audio ads would be missing out on a massive opportunity if they don’t target the ASMR listeners.

Conclusion

YouTube is making efforts to keep up with the changing user behavior across its platform. Considering the current circumstances, it is no surprise that people are spending more time on YouTube listening to music and podcasts or catching live music performances from their favorite band or artist, or tuning in to some ASMR video after a long day.

YouTube specializes in videos, and these new audio ads are definitely a new concept in its world. But it sure has a lot of potential on this platform. Advertisers will be able to expand their reach and target different types of audiences, including music and podcast listeners. Well, how this works out is something only time can tell. But if you plan on running audio ads, do consider the potential use case to make the most out of this new ad format.

Hariom Balhara is an inventive person who has been doing intensive research in particular topics and writing blogs and articles for Tireless IT Services. Tireless IT Services is a digital marketing, SEO, SMO, PPC, and web development company that comes with massive experiences.  We specialize in digital marketing, web designing and development, graphic design, and a lot more.

SOURCE : YouTube Introduces Audio-Only Ads to Target Music & Podcast Listeners