What is SEO
Search Engine Optimisation (more commonly known as SEO) is a method which involves a variety of techniques to alter a website’s natural position in the search engine results pages (SERPs), image search, local search and/or video search to help improve its web presence and ultimately increase its traffic volume.
Do I need SEO?
As more businesses and companies incorporate SEO into their digital marketing strategy today, it’s recommended to consider SEO into yours, especially if you are targeting consumers online. Gone are the days of finding your business or company in the Yellow Pages or newspaper and expecting a positive return on investment (ROI). More and more are making the switch online for reading, learning and interacting via a wide range of systems with search engines being one of the most used today.
Why SEO?
SEO is the key to opening the door to new customers you may have never found through traditional marketing while ensuring a competitive edge over your competition and building credibility online. SEO can complement other marketing efforts (online and/or offline) such as search engine marketing (SEM) to effectively allow promotion of your website in more places than one.
How long does SEO take?
SEO is considered a long term strategy as there are various external variables such as search engine algorithms and industry competition which impact on how a website ranks in the search engine results pages (SERPs), not to mention SEO differs from direct advertising such as Television Advertising or Search Engine Marketing (SEM) which gain high volume in a very short period. View more on How long does SEO take.
Where do I start?
Anyone can practise SEO after a few hours of learning and see results; though true SEO is comprised of extensive knowledge, continuous effort and a variety of techniques. However, if you would like to begin the process of SEO for your website, please read our SEO Checklist to ensure your website is SEO ready and search engine friendly.
Alternatively, you can look at using a professional SEO company like Reload Media.
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Read MoreBidding on Your Own Company Name in AdWords
One PPC strategy that often causes some trepidation amongst advertisers is the decision about whether or not to bid on their own company name and other related brand terms. It is a common argument that if a user is typing in a specific company name, then they will already be able to find this business at the top of the organic search results.
So why do you need to advertise on these terms as well?
Consider this – What if by relying solely on your organic search listing, you may in fact be turning some of your potential customers away?
Below are our top 8 reasons why bidding on your company name is an effective search engine marketing strategy that can help increase conversions, ROI and your brand presence on the web.
1. Attention, Interest, Desire, AdWords
It is important to remember that Google AdWords clickers are different to Google Organic Search Result clickers as they are generally at a different stage of the consumer decision making process. We have found that, in many cases, users who click on the organic search results are more likely to be in the research or ‘interest’ stage of the buying process, whereas users who click on sponsored links (like Google AdWords), are more likely to be purchase ready customers. If you don’t have an active ad catching these purchase ready consumers, your competitors may be winning customers who are in fact searching for you!
2. Because Your Competitors Are
Under most circumstances, your competitors are allowed to bid on your branded keywords. You can submit a copyright infringement request to Google for some more specific brand terms but there is no guarantee this will go through. Depending upon local advertising regulations, competitors are generally allowed to use your brand name in their ads (through ‘comparative advertising’) so it is important that you compete in this advertising space if your competitors already are. Do a Google search now and check if there is anyone else advertising on your brand terms!
3. It’s Cheap
A common misconception is that bidding on your company name is a waste of your PPC advertising budget because your website is already in the organic search results for free. This is simply not true. Using your company name as a keyword is actually a cost effective method to ensure you maintain a very high click through rate at a very low cost per click. Brand terms are generally much cheaper than other keywords in your industry vertical (depending on how competitive your industry and how specific your brand terms are). The benefits of running a brand terms campaign often outweigh the extremely small costs involved in doing so.
4. Increases Campaign Quality Score
The high click through rate that advertising on your brand terms receives will help boost the position of your ads in your other ad groups by increasing the overall click through rate of your account and, therefore, increasing your overall quality score.
5. Control Your Message
AdWords ads offer personality for your brand where you can feature your latest products, promotions or brand messages. The personalised ad text gives you the opportunity to control the message so you can communicate directly with your customer. This engages the customer by offering more relevant information and landing pages. Your ads may even attract more clicks than your organic results. For example, if you are an ice cream store running an offline advertising campaign that promotes a free ice cream for all customers who download a special online coupon in the month of June, an integrated AdWords strategy would allow you to capture users searching on your brand terms and send them directly to your coupon landing page or micro-site whilst reinforcing the offline advertising messages in the AdWords ads themselves.
6. Website Relevance
AdWords can boost sales for your business by capturing the market segment in ‘buying mode’ and ensuring these users are quickly directed to the most relevant page in your website, bypassing your home or other irrelevant pages that may frustrate or confuse buyers.
7. Misspelling Your Company Name
If your business name is not well known or difficult to spell, bidding on likely misspellings ensures your company name, and the users intended search, is listed.
8. Increase Your Online Branding and Search Engine Real Estate
If your business has an organic search listing (or listings) and an AdWords ad when a user types in your company name, then your business occupies more physical space on the Google search page. The more physical space you occupy, the more visible your website.
All these factors are why we generally recommend bidding on your own company name in AdWords.
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Read MoreGoogle TV: A New Frontier in Television Advertising?
A couple of days ago at the 2010 Google I/O conference, Google announced the impending launch of Google TV. This (possibly) game changing platform will work to bring the web and traditional TV closer together than they have ever been before.
Google TV – Watch The Overview
There are a multitude of topics and issues that could be discussed in relation to the announcement of Google TV. As a keen Google advertiser myself, however, I would like to concentrate on just one – the shift in thinking that may occur amongst advertisers if Google’s ambition to combine the internet with traditional television is successful.
Although many other companies have attempted to marry these two beasts in the past (Apple TV, Boxee, TiVo etc), none have yet achieved the ‘Holy Grail’ result – widespread adoption of and acceptance of tv/internet integration. Although to most advertisers, this integration has always been the obvious next step in television advertising, until now, there hasn’t really been a platform on offer that smoothly integrates the television and internet into one, seamless media experience.
Enter Google into the equation and the traditional television advertising landscape begins to look a little different. Google, who already have a wildly successful online advertising platform in Google AdWords, will no doubt be looking at integrating their AdWords system into Google TV. Even at this point in time, Google already have a Google TV interface within their AdWords console which allows advertisers to upload TV ads to be viewed by current Google TV owners.
But consider some other future possibilities for a moment…
If Google TV is a success, we may see a new generation of direct response advertising in traditional TV ads.
Imagine a Domino’s TV ad which allows you to click on an AdWords coupon that then takes you to a HD ordering page designed specifically for TVs.
Or an ad for a new song or movie that takes the user directly to a website where they can buy and download that media onto their television.
What is most exciting about this fundamental shift in the way television advertising may soon be provided is that it will now allow a once passive medium to become an extremely active, engaging and (even more) powerful advertising tool.
Only time will tell if Google’s new television platform will gain widespread acceptance but, for now, as a Google Advertiser, I can only sit and think giddily about the future possibilities for online advertising through television.
What do you think about Google TV and the future of TV advertising? Feel free to comment and discuss!
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Read MoreSEO Glossary
Here’s a quick SEO glossary for the most commonly used terms that float around in SEO land!
301 Redirect - A method used to redirect permanently moved websites from an old URL to a new URL.
Algorithm - A mathematical formula used to rank web pages in the search engines. Algorithms are constantly changing to display the most relevant website results for users.
Authority - The credibility of your site in the search engines. A combination of high quality SEO, domain age, links and good content can help build a site’s overall authority.
CMS – Stands for ‘Content Management System,’ which allows users to easily update a site’s content through an easy editor.
Domain Age - The age that your site has been in existence. An old site can be ‘trusted’ more in the search engines, which can contribute your site’s authority.
Footer Links - Internal text-based links that are placed at the bottom of a page and links to other internal web pages.
Freshness Bonus – Occurs when new content is regularly added to your site. This attracts the attention of search engines, and can improve the possibility of the search engines crawling your site more frequently. And if it’s interesting, people will be crawling to read it too!
FTP – Stands for ‘File Transfer Protocol,’ which is a method of transferring local data to web servers and vice versa.
Geo-targeting - Geo-targeting is the process of making your keywords targeted to a geographic region. This is a good strategy to implement for your keywords, particularly if your site is competing in a competitive and established digital marketplace. Geo-targeted keywords (eg SEO Brisbane), can provide more relevancy for your site and it also usually means your users are more ‘purchase-ready.’
Google PageRank - Also simply known as PR, PageRank is a metric, on a scale of 0-10, for ranking a page based on its quality and quantity of links. PageRank was a primary factor on which Google’s algorithm was based.
Keyword - A word or term that your target market types into a search engine to find your website. Keywords can be generic, branded, long-tailed and/or geo-targeted. They should be selected based on your consumers’ mindset, relevant to the content on your site and how competitive your industry is.
Link Building – The action of getting other websites to link back to yours.
Meta Tags - Includes the meta title, meta keyword and meta description text that is inserted into the code of your site’s pages. The meta title and description for your site may appear on the search engines results pages (SERPs).
Referrals - Are those visitors that arrive at your site via a link from a third-party page. Link building can increase site referrals.
SERPs – Search Engine Results Page.
Title Tag - Title tags are inserted in the code of your site’s pages and appear at the top of your web browser. Title tags are important for SEO and should be unique to each page.
Website – Hopefully you’ve got this one covered!
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Read MoreInternational eCommerce AdWords Campaigns – Part 2
So here it is, the long awaited part 2 of my guide to successful International eCommerce AdWords Campaigns.
In the last post, we explored how to convert international visitors into paying customers.
Now that you’ve got that sorted, let’s look at how to drive quality traffic to your site.
Although there are number of ways to direct international traffic to your website (international search engine optimisation, offline marketing and international public relations to name a few), Google AdWords remains one of the most effective and efficient mediums with regards to testing the validity of new markets.
AdWords allows businesses to very quickly dip their toes into the waters of just about every market in the world at very little cost. Furthermore, businesses can just as quickly pull out of these markets if said waters start to get a little rough.
The next four steps in this guide will therefore concentrate on how to successfully set up an international Google AdWords campaign for the purpose of generating international traffic.
Eeni Meeni Minee Moe
- Choose your markets based on website and market trends. Have you noticed sales coming through any countries in particular in Google Analytics?
- Test only 1-2 markets at a time.
- Take cultural considerations into mind. For example, if you are exporting wine, how does your new market perceive alcohol?
- Take exporting issues into consideration. How will your product be taxed?
I’ll have what they’re having
- Use the Google Ad Preview tool to test if and how your competitors are advertising in your chosen market/s.
- How will you create a magnetic advertising message that will break through the clutter in this new market?
- What lessons can you learn from your competitors in this market place?
Tis’ the season?
- Do you have a seasonal product? If so, figure out what season your market is in.
- Remember that your time scheduling will also need to be altered in an international market if your ads aren’t set to run at all times.
Watch Your Language!
- Consider whether you should be advertising in multiple languages. Be careful however as multiple languages can sometimes bring in double the traffic on broad terms. If this is the case, you may have trouble deciphering which negatives to add to your campaigns!
Even though AdWords will work very effectively to kick start your international traffic, it’s important to make sure you’ve got the whole OIMP sorted!
Popularity: 11%
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