What are Spark Ads?

Spark Ads are an advertising format on social media that lets companies turn the organic posts of real users, known as user generated content (UGC), into part of their own ad campaigns. Those posts can be photos, videos or reviews that users created and published on their own profiles. Companies can then sponsor this content so that it reaches a wider audience.

What are the advantages of Spark Ads?

What makes Spark Ads special is that they come across as more authentic and less intrusive than traditional ad formats. They use the credibility and the creativity of real people to carry a brand message in a more natural and more appealing way. Spark Ads are especially popular on platforms such as TikTok and Instagram, where visual content and storytelling take center stage.

Do Spark Ads have to be labeled as advertising?

Yes, labeling Spark Ads as advertising is legally necessary to keep things transparent and fair. Many countries, Germany among them, have clear rules that require advertising content to be recognizable as such. That applies in particular when it is presented in the form of user generated content. The label makes sure that people understand they are looking at sponsored content, even though somebody else created it. This matters in order to protect the authenticity of the medium and not to undermine the trust of the audience. In practice it means that Spark Ads have to be marked clearly with terms such as sponsored, ad or a comparable notice.

How can I add Spark Ads to my online marketing strategy?

Spark Ads offer a distinctive way to increase the reach and the engagement of your marketing campaigns. They can be built into a wider online marketing strategy in several ways:

• More authenticity: by using user generated content, brands can come across as more authentic. Spark Ads help you build a natural connection with your target audience, because the content comes from real people and is often perceived as more credible.

• Reaching new segments: with Spark Ads you can reach new segments of your target audience. Because these ads sit on the profiles of real people, they can build a bridge to their followers, who may not know your brand yet.

• More engagement: user generated content tends to generate higher engagement, because it is often perceived as more relevant and more appealing. Bringing this content into your campaigns can lift your interaction rate.

• Using feedback: Spark Ads can also serve as a tool to get direct feedback from your target audience. The comments and reactions on these posts can offer valuable insight into what your customers need and prefer.

• Cost efficiency: since the UGC already exists, the cost of content production goes down. That makes Spark Ads a cost efficient addition to your existing marketing activities.

Paid formats such as Spark Ads buy attention for as long as the budget runs. Where that attention should lead, and how it works together with the visibility you own yourself, is part of what we look at in our SEO support. The same goes for the reviews and other content your customers write about you.

What is a sitemap?

A sitemap is a digital document that lists the pages of a website in a file format browsers can read, usually XML or HTML. It shows all pages and subpages of a site in a hierarchy, along with how they relate to each other and how they are connected through internal links. A sitemap is a simple way to tell search engines which pages are available to their crawler, which is why a correctly built sitemap supports search engine optimization.

How do I create a sitemap?

There are three ways to create a sitemap

1. Automatic generation by your CMS

Many content management systems have a function that generates sitemaps automatically. They usually add newly created pages to the sitemap on their own.

2. Manual creation

In principle, sitemaps can also be created by hand. To do that, create an .xml file that contains all the links and follows the structure below.

Example of a sitemap in XML format:

<urlset xmlns="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9"
        xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
        xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9 http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9/sitemap.xsd">

<url>
<loc>https://taismo.de/en/what-is/</loc>
<lastmod>2021-05-19T19:39:19+00:00</lastmod>
<priority>0.85</priority>
<changefreq>monthly</changefreq>
</url>
<url>
<loc>https://taismo.de/en/what-is/sitemap/</loc>
<lastmod>2021-05-19T19:39:19+00:00</lastmod>
<priority>0.80</priority>
</url>
</urlset>

The following tags are mandatory:

• urlset: Contains general information about the file and points to the standard of the protocol in use. Here, “0.9” refers to the version.
• url: The primary tag of every entry.
• loc: The address of the page, so its URL. It has to start with the protocol (http or https, for example).

The following entries are optional and add extra information:

• lastmod: The date the page was last changed.
• changefreq: How often the content is expected to change.
• priority: Indicates the priority of the page for the crawler. Valid values are between 0.0 and 1.0.

3. Use a sitemap generator

Plenty of sitemap generators are available online. All you have to do is fill them with the links to every available subpage. They then output the source code or even the finished .xml file.

The finished sitemap should be stored in the root directory of your web server.

How do I tell search engines where my sitemap is?

Add the following line to your robots.txt file:
Sitemap: link to the sitemap

Example:
Sitemap: https://taismo.de/sitemap_index.xml

You can also submit the path to your sitemap to Google directly in the Google Search Console. You will find the option under:
Menu > Index > Sitemaps > Add a new sitemap

Whether search engines then really crawl and index those pages is a second question. An SEO audit checks exactly that, including how your crawl budget is spent, and the full SEO glossary covers the terms that connect to this one.

What is the SERP?

The abbreviation SERP stands for search engine result page. When a user types a query into the search bar of a search engine such as Google or Bing, they are taken to this result page. There the search engine shows a list of the websites its algorithm considers most relevant for that query.

How do search engines work?

To be able to show the SERP within seconds, search engines do not run the search in real time. They permanently crawl the internet and the websites they find there. The search engine then builds an index of websites together with the topics and keywords assigned to them. When a query comes in, the search engine plays out the websites it has already indexed.

In the best case, the SERP therefore holds the websites that were the most relevant ones a few hours ago for the term you searched for.

What does the SERP consist of?

In principle, the SERP holds a list of links plus a little extra information about each page. These short blocks of text are called snippets.

In their simplest form, snippets consist of the title and the description (meta title and meta description). That is why every subpage of a website should carry a meta title and a meta description in its source code, so that the page is presented well on the SERP. You will find tips on writing both in our SEO glossary.

If no description is stored, search engines show an excerpt from the text of the page. That excerpt may be cut off, or it may represent the content of the page incorrectly, and the visitor will most likely scroll on to the next result.

Several methods let you put additional information right there in the search results. Enriching snippets with extra information turns them into so called rich snippets.

What can I do to make my website appear on the SERP?

Which ranking a website gets on the SERP depends on many factors. Besides the keywords, the Core Web Vitals have become a decisive part of the picture for Google. They take loading times, layout and the design of the experience into account. The work that goes into improving a search engine ranking is called SEO (search engine optimization).

Do you need help running a keyword analysis for your website, or would you like a first consultation on SEO? That is exactly what our SEO services are for.

Did you know? The Serponado effect

The extreme dynamics of search result pages have even produced their own coinages in the SEO world. A current example is the term Serponado, a portmanteau of SERP and tornado. It describes the storm like volatility and the unpredictable jumping of rankings (the so called Google Dance) that happens when hundreds of optimizers fight for the top spot at the same time. How such an algorithm storm behaves in practice, and how you can tame it, is something we currently document live in our SEO magazine.

What are secondary keywords?

Secondary keywords are the supporting search terms around the main keyword of a page, and they cover related topics or questions your visitors may also have. They are often called secondary search terms. Unlike primary keywords, which represent the central focus of a piece of content, secondary keywords widen the topic with more nuanced or specific aspects. They raise the relevance of your content for a broader range of search queries, without pulling it away from its main subject.

How should I handle secondary keywords on my website?

Work secondary keywords into your content deliberately, so that you improve visibility and rankings without hurting the reading experience. A few proven practices:

• Context: use secondary keywords to support and round out your main content by weaving them in naturally. That can happen in paragraphs, in subheadings or in the meta description.
• Understand user intent: pick secondary keywords that match what your audience is actually looking for. It makes it far more likely that visitors will find your content relevant and helpful.
• Variety: use the range of your secondary keywords to cover different facets of your topic, including close semantic variants such as LSI keywords, and give a fuller answer to the queries your visitors bring.
• Quality before quantity: it can be tempting to work in as many keywords as possible, but keep the focus on high quality, natural content that puts the reader first. Piling terms up turns into keyword stuffing.

Are secondary keywords important for SEO?

Yes, secondary keywords matter for SEO for several reasons:

• Topical relevance: they help search engines understand the context your main keyword sits in, which raises the topical relevance of your website.
• Search rankings: by covering a broader range of queries, secondary keywords can widen the visibility of your content in the search results.
• User experience: because they cover a topic more completely, secondary keywords improve the experience on your website, and that is a ranking factor in itself.
• Competitive edge: using secondary keywords deliberately can put you ahead of competitors who do not cover a topic at the same depth.

Secondary keywords are therefore an essential part of an effective SEO strategy: they let site owners optimize content for a wider spectrum of search queries and offer a better experience at the same time. One caveat: if several pages target the same secondary terms, you run into keyword cannibalization. Working out that keyword map is part of ongoing SEO support, and our full SEO glossary explains the related terms.