After recently running a seminar covering some of the basics of internet marketing, I was surprised by how little the average Sydney business owner knows. I decided I would use the material for that seminar to offer a few insights for those of you that may be feeling a little overwhelmed by it all.
This article will cover:
- Google Advertising Basics
- SEO Basics
- Website Marketing tips
Google Ads
The front page of Google is comprised of up to four sections. Most of the time you will see 3 to 4 ads at the top of the search results page with a small green ‘Ad’ box next to it, a maps section which we will talk more about, and an ‘organic’ or ‘SEO’ section of Google. Occasionally you will also see up to 3 ads at the bottom.
The fourth section that will not always appear, depending on what it is that you searched for, is the Google Shopping section. This will bring up pictures of products from e-commerce website and will usually appear when you have searched for a particular product.
In this blog post we will cover search network advertising basic on Google. For more information about Display network advertising, Google shopping or Remarketing please give us a call or go to our contact us form and fill it out.
Google Search Network Advertising
Advertising on Google’s search network is the process of having text ads appear on the first page of search results for specific keywords. This is a great way to get you’re business in front of people while they are actually looking for you’re goods or services. It works on a daily budget setup so that you can cap how much your prepared to spend in a day.
Cost Per Click
Advertising on the search network is like bidding in an auction. The more you bid the higher up the page you will be. However this is not the only thing that will determine. Make sure that the keyword in your ad text is relevant and the landing page is also relevant to the search queries you are targeting. You Ad position is a combination of how much you bid a long with the quality score for your keyword. Google looks at three main things when determining the quality score of your campaign, and more specifically the actual keyword in question.
Quality Score
The quality score of your keywords is determined by the expected click through rate of the add triggered by your keyword, landing page experience, and keyword relevancy.
The click through rate is important to note because the more times your add appears and is not clicked on, the less Google will see your ad as a relevant and popular search results. Click through rate is simply how many clicks your campaign has received divided by the amount of times it has been shown (impressions).
The landing page experience is determined by a number of factors including the content on the actual page as well as whether or not your web page is mobile friendly. Having a fully optimised landing page will have a major impact on your quality score.
Keywords
Keywords are the aim of the game when it comes to Google’s search network advertising. When choosing what keywords you want your ads to come up for its important that the keywords are not only related to your business but something a potential customer of your would actually type in.
There are different match types in Google Adwords that you can choose from in order to optimise your campaign to have a higher position for exact matched search phrases or include closely related searches that you would also like your add to be displayed for. Make sure you choose the match types carefully as you don’t want you’re budget being spent on irrelevant searches.
Negative keywords
For every keyword you have in your campaign you should have at least 5 negative keywords. These are words that if included in the searches query will stop your ad from being displayed. Usually these include the standard, employment, information, DIY, careers and so on…
Ad Text
When creating ads for your Google Adwords campaign make sure you include a call to action, possibly a special deal, and anything else that will set you apart from your competition. Ad extensions are important as it will improve the quality score and take up more real estate on the front page of the search results.
Ad extensions:
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Site link extensions
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Location extensions
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Call extensions
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App extensions
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Review extensions
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Callout extensions
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Structured snippet extensions
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Automated extensions report
Ad Scheduling
Ad scheduling is a very useful tool. You can choose at what time of the day you would like your ads to come up, what days and even how much you would like to bid at differing times of the day. If you find that you are getting more calls at a particular time of the week you can increase the amount that you bid to maximise your potential return.
Geographical Targeting
Geo targeting allows you to literally draw a line in the map. With Google you can target any country in the world! It’s very simple really, you choose the area that you would like to have your ads displayed in. There are also options that will enable you to be eligible for people who are outside of your serviceable area but searching for an areas that is within your geographically targeted area.
Search Terms
To make sure that you’re not wasting your internet marketing budget on searches that you do not want to be coming up for, make sure you regularly check the search terms tab under keywords on your campaign. This will show you what people actually typed in before clicking on one of your ads. If you find there that there are keywords that are wasting your money, simply add them to your list of negative keywords to avoid this happening in the future.
IP Tracking
Here at Australian Internet Advertising we have software that enables us to track the IP addresses of people who have clicked on your ads. This enables us to block those competitors of yours that have decided to unethically waste your budget by repeatedly clicking on your ads.
Search Engine Optimisation Basics
The basics of SEO are something that is important to take into account when running a website that you are hoping to get leads from. Below we will outline some simple tips that I’m sure you will find useful.
Google My Business (Local Search)
Google my business is a console that you can log into straight from you browser with any Gmail or Google apps account. Just simply type in Google my business and click on the first search result.
This will take you through to the Google My business console. From there you can apply for a Google Maps listing by giving Google your address. They will probably want to send you a post card with a code on it to verify that you are genuinely located in the area. If you tick the box that says that you deliver your goods or services to people at their location and specify a target area your address will not be shown publicly on your maps listing.
There are a few tips and tricks with Google Maps to get your listing higher in the results, remember Google usually only allows for 3 maps listing on the front page of competitive search results.
To give yourself the best chance of being on the front page its important to complete your full profile with an intro (the content of which is very important), photos, and a Google plus profile picture. Any reviews you can get will help as well. Especially if you respond to them immediately. It does not necessarily matter if they are good or bad reviews as far as rankings are concerned however you probably don’t want a whole bunch of bad reviews for everyone to see.
Onsite SEO
There are a number of things you can do on your website to improve its rankings on Google, for relevant keywords.
H1 and H2 Tags
Putting heading and subheadings in your post or page is of paramount importance. When Google crawls your site they will take these into serious consideration on deciding what your content is all about. You can actually have h tags or (headings all the way down to H6, however this is not necessary. As long as you have your keywords in the heading Google will know that is the topic of the content. Do not repeat your keyword over and over again or have more then 1 H1 tag per page.
Latent Semantic Indexing
LSI Keywords are important. Spamming your page with the same keyword over and over again will get you nowhere on Google. To prove to Google that your content is useful to the reader and relevant to the topic you will need to include keywords that have been categorised by Google as relevant to your topic.
If you want a very easy and quick way of finding out some of the key phrases that Google categorises semantically to your targeted search term, simply perform the search on Google, scroll to the bottom of the page and look at the suggested searches! 🙂
Internal Linking
How your pages are linked together is also something Google will look at when crawling your site. There is a famous technique called SILO SEO. This focusses on categorising and organising your content. Linking pages together only when they are related in some way. It is important to plan this out before you get started on a new site as it will save you a lot of time.
Image Optimisation
When uploading images to your site make sure that you optimise them to improve your rankings. This is done by having the correct file name of the image. Something like image2001.png does not do your website any good. Take the opportunity to use a keyword relevant file name. Before uploading your image to your site use a compression tool to reduce the site of the image. You do not lose any quality and the image will faster onto the visitors’ browser. Site speed is not something to forget about when working on your website.
Finally once you have uploaded the image add an Alt tag to the image so that Google knows what the image is of. Google’s spider bots cannot crawl your site and see what your images are of (yet!) so let the spider bots know by using the Alt tag feature either in the coding or through your content management system.
Social Media Integration
You have probably seen the buttons on nearly every website that you visit showing the logos of Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Google Plus. These are a great way to direct some of your website traffic to your social media pages and build up a fan base. This also will affect your rankings and improve your website’s overall SEO health.
That’s all for now! Stay tuned for more useful info about how you can get more out of your online marketing efforts in Sydney with a few small simple tricks.
