Geotargeting & SEM: A Guide to Spend Less and Get More
As a digital marketing and SEM specialist, I work with location-based marketing on a daily basis, but I know this isn’t the case for everyone. In this article, I’m going to break down the basics of geotargeting and search engine marketing, and answer the age-old question, “How is this affecting my vacation rental business?” I hope the information I’m providing gives you the tools and terminology to discuss the use of geotargeting within your pay-per-click (PPC) strategy with ease and confidence.
SEM stands for Search Engine Marketing, which uses paid ads in Microsoft Ads and Google Ads to market your website and appear higher on search engine result pages (SERPs) by paying money for ads and bidding on keywords related to Your site relate brand. However, SEM is also often used to describe “everything” in terms of search engine visibility, including SEO.
SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization, which focuses on optimizing a website’s landing pages with keywords and other ranking factors increase his chances of showing up in the higher SERPs. When a website is new or in an extremely competitive market, SEM coupled with SEO is a smart strategy to get your brand in front of the right audience.
Here’s an example of what a SERP looks like with paid ads and organic results.
Geotargeting, not to be confused with its cooler sister geofencing, isn’t as complicated as it sounds. Geotargeting is used to strengthen your campaigns by targeting people who have been in a specific location in conjunction with other targeting variables such as demographics, behaviors and interests. Geofencing only targets everyone in a certain area. For example, you would use geotargeting to get your vacation rental ads more detailed, but you could use geofencing to place real estate agency ads at a local competitor’s weekend homeowner event. (None of you would, would you?) Geofencing is also synonymous with using a Bluetooth beacon; If someone in a certain area, e.g. B. your company, he gets some kind of notification on his phone.
Whether you call it potato or potato, the bottom line is that location-based targeting should always be used in any PPC campaign in the vacation rental industry, especially if you’re in a popular area. Put your money on cities and states that have high conversion rates and are known to get into your market. This is the best way to maximize your budget, especially if you’re on a tight budget! If you run ads on Google and don’t use geotargeting, you’re probably wasting money. Take a look at which cities and states are converting the best, not just the ones that are watching. Viewers are curious. Bookers are obliged.
A geo-targeted pay-per-click campaign is a powerful weapon in your digital marketing arsenal. Not only do you use your PPC budget more effectively through geotargeting areas that have historically converted prospects into books, but depending on the product, you can customize your ad text to match the terminology of the geographic location you’re targeting.
Throughout our years of PPC work in the VR industry, we’ve found that different regions of the United States use different words to describe what they’re looking for (and Google knows it, too). For example, when searching for a mountain destination, “accommodation” is the most popular search term. For a beach destination, it’s “apartments.” To use geotargeting effectively, you need to make sure you create ads for all variations of what people are looking for so you can cover all the bases.
Whether it’s “beach” vs. “oceanfront,” “cabin” vs. “cottage,” or the international dilemma of “vacation” vs. “holiday,” updating your ad copy to reflect the terminology of the region you’re targeting You aim to increase your reach and your chances of conversion.
By understanding which geographies bring you the highest revenue, curating your ad copy to match their dialect, and investing more in those locations, you will add tremendous value to your SEM strategy.
In June 2022, we noticed an increasing number of site visits for nearly all of our New York City clients. Not a few, but a whole lot of people.
When our team started debating theories about a giant lizard riot that forced all New Yorkers to take shelter in a 5-star luxury vacation rental, we realized something lazier than Godzilla was at work in the data and started scouring the internet for answers to browse What was suddenly so special about New York?
Nothing came.
However, it wasn’t just New York. It was Chicago, Los Angeles, Seattle, Denver – all major cities in all major time zones – depending on which time zone the client’s feeder markets were in. It was like a mass exodus! Doing what we do best, creating movie references while analyzing and cross-referencing the data – the plot then thickened.
The only people fleeing these cities were iPhone users. More specifically, it was the users who recently updated to the new iOS 15.5 update. So unless we’re living in a cell phone attack movie from the early 2000s, the dates weren’t right!
Through our research, an interesting and relevant article came up on February 22, 2006 entitled All Google’s Roads Lead to Kansas. Although this article was not the answer to our current problem, it provided very valuable information relevant to our discussion today.
All Google’s Roads Lead to Kansas, or Coffeyville to be precise, addresses the geographic phenomenon that if Google Analytics cannot locate your IP address, it will place you in the center of the country, which is Coffeyville, Kansas.
Well, this article describes how Google tracks your information using third-party location providers. The Coffeyville mystery likely stems from inaccurate source data, which isn’t necessarily a blocked IP address showing up as (not fixed), but actually a miscommunication between Google and its third-party location information provider.
After confirming that Godzilla was not terrorizing the citizens of New York City, we confirmed that by turning off your location services completely and turning on your iCloud public relay (which is a requirement for iCloud+) before visiting any website, you also protect your geographic data Ping New York or Chicago location and IP address in Google Analytics no matter where you are!
Well, as most digital marketers know, the answer I give today will probably be old-fashioned tomorrow. The latest geotargeting and search engine marketing news is bittersweet. Apple has rolled out a brand new update for iPhone users that has undeniably impacted geolocation in Google Analytics. With approximately 53% of all website visitors using mobile devices, according to a study conducted by Oberlo, this new privacy update will have a major impact on how we review geographic data in Google Analytics.
In June 2020, Apple introduced iOS 14, which required apps to request permission to track user activity. Fast forward to May 2022, we have the mass exodus from New York. Apple has released a new Privacy Update 15.5 that affects all iOS users who are dealing with Safari. In a corner, Apple’s latest update in terms of tracking privacy in apps is wonderful because it gives the consumer more control over their online activities being tracked, but as a digital marketer, it poses huge problems within data. The new privacy -Apple’s update makes geotargeting significantly more difficult due to the lack of accuracy of the data.
The average vacation rental website gets 65% of all its traffic from a mobile device. The most commonly used mobile device is the Apple iPhone. After going through the numbers with our customers, this equates to around 20-25% of website traffic being “geomasked” which will skew your data.
A possible solution to the location inaccuracy in Analytics could be as simple as creating a filter to remove major cities from certain views. However, these cities attract several travelers each year, so don’t completely eliminate targeting this area from your Google Ads strategy.
The solution? While you shouldn’t be hasty in increasing your bid strategy for these locations, you should use previous data to reinforce your geotargeting strategy. Focus on sites that have shown large conversion-oriented audiences in the past.
The consequences of this inaccurate geolocation data are unfortunate for business owners and their digital marketing teams, as the data they receive through Google Analytics may not be accurate.
If you’ve noticed a strange spike in traffic recently, it’s important to dig a little more! Add some parameters, isolate the variables and run an experiment. Always remember that no matter how accurate you think the source of your data is, it should never be taken at face value and requires proper analysis by a trained eye to spot anomalies.
I could discuss the politics behind Apple’s latest update regarding its relationship with Google and Facebook, but I’ll save that for another day.
Starting an online store is easy, but gaining authority on Google is difficult. It requires trust, loyalty and transparency of your brand. However, I believe Apple’s latest update is a positive thing for iOS users and gives them the opportunity to gain more control over how their data is used.
I also think that a lot of brands that spend money on SEM to market their products probably have a piece of the game and are offering a product that they are worth enough to invest in and I want to see those ads. So, with the exception of Godzilla, which tracks my location, I plan to share my data with certain apps to improve my shopping experience.
However, as a true crime podcast lover, I’m glad to know that I have more control over the data shared from my phone. However, as a digital marketer, I urge Google to work with their external location providers to find a solution to these specificities. Even showing these untraceable locations as (unset) would help SEM professionals and business owners properly apply a geotargeting strategy and target viable locations accurately, as opposed to a popular metro area or a cute Kansas farm.