Pure SEO’s This Week In Search series takes a look at the top SEO and SEM news stories from the week.
This week AdWords helped advertisers, Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook tried new things with videos, and Google Maps took people to outer space.
AdWords Introduces New Report to Show Speed of Ad Conversion
A new report in Google AdWords allows advertisers to see roughly how long it takes users to convert once they’ve clicked on an ad. AdWords’ new ‘days to conversion‘ segment estimates how many days you should wait between the user’s initial click and their eventual conversion. This data is based on the performance history of the campaign.
Some people convert after the first click, while others may browse through other websites before returning to the first. With this in mind, AdWords is helping advertisers make more informed decisions when it comes to optimizing their campaigns and ad units.
Share Videos on Twitter With the New Ad Unit Called Video Website Card
Twitter has introduced a new ad unit called the Video Website Card. This allows advertisers to use videos as a hook to drive traffic back to their website. This will increase website visits and allows advertisers to promote their brand to a large market.
The Video Website Card features an auto-playing video, which is said to drive twice the engagement of standard mobile video ads, according to information from a beta test. Advertisers can add a call-to-action at the end of a video, and they can play around with a customizable headline and a destination URL.
Explore the Solar System with Google Maps
Google Maps is taking on more of the world with an update that lets users navigate planets and moons. Desktop users can explore far away places (maybe even try to spot Rick and Morty) by zooming out of Earth on Google Maps, or jumping straight in.
The images are ones captured by the spacecraft Cassini, which was launched into space 20 years ago. This update is currently only available to desktop users.
Facebook Brings Out ‘Stories’ for Pages
Facebook hasn’t been having much luck with their ‘stories‘ feature, but they’re giving it another go by making it more widely available. Now it’s not just individual users that can post a story – pages can publish them too.
LinkedIn is Testing Auto-Play Video Ads on Mobile
LinkedIn users have been able to upload their own videos to the website since August, and now the professional social network is selling auto-playing video ads. They are currently being tested by a group of marketers, but LinkedIn hopes to make them available to all advertisers in the near future.