Posts filed under ‘Marketing’
Getting A High Quality Score With PPC
Pay per click is not exactly SEO but it can be very beneficial to know how to use it properly. A savvy marketer/webmaster should at least understand both “free” and paid search marketing. Over the past few months we have taken a look at some excellent SEO tips and tricks and today I would like to a few great PPC tips that will save you money on clicks and (hopefully) increase your CTR (click thru rate).
What is QS (Quality Score)?
As stated in the search engine watch SEM glossary :”A score assigned by search engines that is calculated by measuring an ad’s clickthrough rate, analyzing the relevance of the landing page, and considering other factors used to determine the quality of a site and reward those of higher quality with top placement and lower bid requirements. Some factors that make up a quality score are historical keyword performance, the quality of an ad’s landing page, and other undisclosed attributes. All of the major search engines now use some form of quality score in their search ad algorithm.”
In a nut shell, it’s all about being relevant. If your ad and landing page are relevant you will(should) get a better click thru rate and then you will be rewarded by higher advert positioning.
How To Get A High Quality Score.
At the beginning of your PPC campaign it is all about one thing – relevance. How relevant your ad is and how relevant your landing page is( the page where the person goes to after they click on your ad). You see it time and time again – you are looking for something to buy. Let’s say for example you are looking for a dog collar.
You go to Google and type in dog collar. On the right hand side (where the ads are displayed) you will see all types of ads ranging from dog food to puppy clothes. These are highly irrelevant to what the person is search for. Many of the pages that have dog collar on the will take you to the main page of their website and you actually have to find where their dog collar section is. This is not good advertising practice. I know that if I am looking for a dog collar and click on an advert telling me that I can find one there to buy and it takes me elsewhere, I probably will lose interest fast and leave. This is why it is extremely important to keep your keywords and ad groups as tightly knit as possible.
What does that mean?
Let’s say we are selling dog collars. I will do some quick search engine keyword research and come up with a few keywords (note: you should be far more thorough with your keyword research, but for this example I am just going to do this quickly) Using the Google Keyword Tool I typed in dog collar and got the top 10 traffic keywords:
dog collar
dog collars
dog training collar
dogs collars
dog training collars
dog bark collar
leather dog collar
dog collars leashes
dog collars leather
dogs collar
OK so now we need to group these keywords and make sure that they are as relevant as possible. I will group them like this:
Dog Collar
dog collar
dog collars
dogs collars
dogs collar
Dog Training Collar
dog training collar
dog training collars
Leather Dog Collar
leather dog collar
dog collars leather
dog bark collar
dog collars leashes
As you can see I have grouped these perfectly so that each group contains almost identical keywords. Now it is time to write ads for the various groups.
TIP: A really nice little trick is to try and make sure you put your keyword in the title of your ad AS WELL as in the body somewhere.
Keep in mind that you only have alimited amount of space for your ads.
Just as an example, for the keyword group Dog Collar my ad might look something like this:
Awesome Dog Collars
Pick The Perfect Dog Collar
From Our Huge Selection Now!
http://www.awesomedogcollars.com
Can you see how I have put the keywords in twice?
Now that the keyword and ad has been taken care of, you need to make sure that when someone clicks on this they are not taken to the dog food section of your website.
Keeping everything relevant will definately help hugely with your quality score. Do a little research in your niche and you will be surprised at how bad some of the advertising is.
Targeting Valuable Keywords
Keyword research is the most important step when planning a new website. Knowing what your target market is searching for will save you hours, if not days, of content creation and web page building that could yield useless in the future. Can you imagine not doing any keyword research and designing a 100 page, content rich website targeting keywords that no one is searching for? You site will never be seen.
So which keywords should you target.
Usually your first instincts are to go with keywords that bring the highest amount of traffic, right? Because the more traffic you bring to your site, the more money you make. Well that might be true for some sites, (websites making most of their money off Adwords for example), but if you are selling something from your website this is usually not the case.
You are looking to target keywords that your soon to be customer is typing in when they are looking to buy something.
The first stage of our buying cycle is discovering the product. It can be from advertising, a TV advert, newpaper, practically anything can trigger the need, the want to buy something. Then we hop online and do our research.
The internet has so much information that we are spoilt for choice. You can compare prices of say a camera on 10 different websites in 5 mins as opposed to the offline method of browsing the mall for example. This is the second stage, the research phase. Now this might be (if you have a great deal) a good place to try and catch the buyer.
So for example: lets say we see an advert for digital cameras and we want one. We hop online and do the research. We would probably start with a generic term like “digital camera” or “cheap digital camera”. As you dive further into your research you will find the EXACT camera that you want, for eg. “Sony Cybershot DSCW120/B”. This is where you want to get your traffic from.The third and most important stage:
Buying phase. Now the person has done all their research and is ready to buy there brand new digital camera, they type it into a search engine and who comes up? You do, because you have researched your keywords properly and are waiting there to sell them the camera.
Remember, they keywords that bring you the most traffic are by no means the ones that will bring you the most money. If you liked this article and are interested in human behaviour and marketing check out Seth Godins blog. He is the master of these things!
Company Blog – Onsite Or Offsite?
I have read this question posted on many a forum. Which is more beneficial? Having a blog on my company website or have an external blog?
First of all I would just like to say that if you are going to have a blog, be it on or off site, you have to make sure that you update it regularly. Humans are creatures of habit. If someone gets used to reading a new post daily on a specific blog they are going to expect new, fresh content everyday. One of the beautiful things about blogging is that you don’t actually have to be formal. In fact, you should really take full advantage of your company blog and make it as personal as possible. You have a great opportunity to interact with your clients.
Back to the question at hand, should you have an onsite blog or an offsite blog?
External Company Blog.
An external company blog does have its advantages. Firstly you have a great opportunity to build up unique content and smartly start linking back to your website. But where can you create a blog for free?
My favorite two websites are
Both of these blogging platforms are free. Quite a good idea (if you have the time and/or writing skills) is to start a blog on each one of these thereby getting two sets of valuable incoming links to your website for free.
While an external blog is extremely beneficial for SEO, it is an excellent idea to have an internal company blog too.
Google loves blogs. They see them as a web presence that is constantly updated and we know how much the big G likes fresh, unique content. As I have mentioned before, you need to be updating your blog very regularly to take full advantage of this. There are some awesome aspects here that you will be applying to your website/online business.
Firstly, you will be constantly adding new pages to your website. This will help with traffic. The more relevant pages you have to your business, the more chance there is of your website being found on different search engines.
Secondly, you are helping build your businesses brand. You can well afford to be quite a lot less formal on your blog, hence developing a relationship with your customers. Remember, people like to buy from other “people”. By coming across as a normal person, you can seriously increase your sales.
In conclusion, if you have the time, try and have both blogs. One you can use for link building and the other for traffic generation.
Testing Your Market For Free (Almost)
Smart market research is the most important aspect of running an online business. What is market research? Wiki describes it as “the process of systematically gathering, recording and analyzing data and information about customers, competitors and the market.” No point in selling menswear to a dominantly female audience, right? You can see why it is imperative that that you choose the right market.
So how can you do this on the web?
I have touched on keyword research before and how important it is to your online campaign. Also I have written about what I personally think is the best keyword research tool around. With any research tool you can get estimates on the amount of times people are typing in a particular key phrase per day or month. The main word being ESTIMATES. Assumption is the mother of all fu#$ ups, right? So how can you get exact, accurate numbers that will tell you exactly which search terms to target on your SEO crusade?
We are going to use Google Adwords. Thats why this is *almost* free. On the internet we are lucky because in the offline world businesses pay big bucks to find out exactly what consumers are looking for. In our online world we can find this out in days, it will cost us hardly anthing – in fact, you will probably even make some money off it.
Here is what you do:
Use the Adwords Keyword Tool to come up with a list of the best keywords YOU think are relevant to your website. Now you will get some average search result numbers but now we are going to see which ones are REALLY getting searched. Divide them up into little groups (the more similar the better), put them in your Adwords account and make a few ads for them, pointing to the relevant pages on your website. Set a maximum of $10 a day and make sure you bid just enough to be on the first page of the ad results. Remember, we are not after clicks here, we are after impressions.
Why?
Because this will give us a great idea of which of the keywords are being searched for and which aren’t. Soon you will start to see impressions racking up in your stats and you will be able to determine which keywords you should be targeting with your SEO efforts.
So remember, there is no point in launching an entire website without knowing exactly what your target market is looking for.
Marketing With Squidoo
If you are a webmaster, there is no doubt you would have heard of Squidoo. Squidoo is a website that allows you to build your own pages where you can promote anything you want!
Here are some examples:
Basic SEO Tips
Link Building Ideas And Tips
As you can see you have the ability to create a seperate page away from your website and promote your website. What you must understand though is that this is by no means a new way to spam. Squidoo have come up with some great preventative measures to ensure that make sure it has good quality content on it.
So how can you market your website/business with Squidoo?
I am sure you understand how important incoming, one way links are to your website. If not read this. So think of Squidoo as a great way to post original content with valuable links pointing to your website! Easy as that. If you do your keyword research correctly and are targetting longtailed keywords, you also have a very good chance of ranking quite highly for you Squidoo lens.
This means that you will get more traffic and, hopefully, more sales to your website.
