This campaign was set up by another company and we are just taking over their website’s PPC to try and optimise its performance. The first item for improvement we noticed was that their Quality Score (QS) for their keywords was very low! Quality scores are given out of ten, and some of their keywords had quality scores of just three or four! In such a competitive industry this is a big issue, meaning their CPC will be a lot higher than it needs to be. To check the quality score of keywords in Google Adwords you need to click into the Campaign, then click “Keywords” and in the “Columns” section make sure “Qual Score” is ticked. When it is, a column will appear in your keyword summary page showing the QS.

So, that’s the first on the agenda to tackle. As a quick suggestion, all of the following will probably be worth looking into:

• Relevance of Ads to keyword phrases
• Keyword Phrase matching – ie: are they using the best keyword matching in terms of  ‘exact’, ‘broad’ and ‘phrase’
• Negative keywords – add negative keywords to filter out irrelevant clicks
• Landing pages – are the landing pages optimised for the keyword / ad combination? If not then get your web design company to make sure that each advert has a carefully targetted landing page with specific calls-to-action.
• Position Preferences – whilst this won’t affect your quality score, setting a position preference may prevent your ad from showing if the Ad Rank is not high enough to beat the competition in your position preference range.

That’s just a quick summary, you might be wondering why all the detail in the above when the title of this blog post is about Adwords ‘impression share’. Well, the quality score impacts how many times your ad is shown. In general terms, the impression share (IS) is how many times your Ad was shown for relevant searches. A 100% impression share would mean that your advert was shown each time a relevant search was made. A 50% impression share would mean that your advert was only shown 50% of the times it could have been.

So why is this relevant? You can drill-down to find out whether a low daily budget limited the amount of times that Google showed your advert, or whether it was due to ‘Ad Rank’. If you’re not reaching your daily budget yet the Impression Share is still low, that probably means your Ad Rank is low. This is a formula of Cost Per Click (CPC) and the quality score.  Increasing CPC (the costly method) or improving your Quality Score will help to improve your Ad’s Impression Share.

Tags: impression share, google adwords, ppc management, cpc, quality score, increase impression share, adrank

Ecommerce website owners should continue to market their website and their products to tap into the increasing market. Although the actual numbers of online shoppers is increasing, it is also reported that they are becoming increasingly sophisticated in their shopping habits. Some consumers go straight to a particular website to make a purchase, whereas other shoppers will use increasingly complex search engine queries to find the best products at the best prices.

What does this mean for ecommerce site owners? I would suggest that website owners continue to look for new and emerging methods of promoting their online stores. Some methods have been around for a few years now, but here are some to provide food for thought:

• Google Base – upload your products so they are searchable in Google product listings
• Twitter – Increasingly useful to connect to your target market, and also indirectly advertise your products
• Search marketing / SEO – Continue to analyse your search marketing strategy to make sure your site isn’t slipping. Search marketing and optimisation should ideally be part of an ongoing campaign to ensure you maximise your exposure.
• Facebook / Linked In / My Space etc.. – depends on your target market as to what may be relevant.

Tags: ecommerce, online, e-retailing, imrg

Specialist discussion forums can not only provide a wealth of information and advice from a variety of viewpoints, but can also be a medium-term online marketing strategy. By responding to questions you can demonstrate your expertise in your field of business, and as you become part of the community you may start to receive requests for business and referrals. Most forums also allow you to add a ‘signature’ to your posts, which in some cases can benefit your search engine marketing strategy.

Participating in forums should be both ‘give’ and ‘take’ – you put effort into helping others, and hopefully in the process you will also be promoting your website and business.

Tags: online communities, networking websites, internet users, discussion forums

After reading through a web design forum earlier today, one topic caught my interest regarding certain SEO software packages which claim to be able to achieve first page results on Google for customers websites. First of all, they can’t, simple as that. It’s a fact that for the majority of even slightly competitive keyword phrases, no automated tool will be able to cut the mustard when it comes to achieving results…

SEO is very much an intuitive process involving a multitude of factors from high quality website content, inbound links, on-site search optimisation, site link structure etc.. It needs a human eye to assess the level of competitiveness of the keyword, and develop a strategy accordingly. If you read the terms and conditions of many of these SEO software packages which make such claims, you will probably see that the first page results they quote are based upon a number of unrealistic (or just plain stupid) assumptions. For example, one major SEO software package states that to achieve the results it promises, your website must have more inbound links than the current most competitive sites. Well, to any seasoned SEO consultant, that really isn’t much of a surprise and would form the basis of most SEO campaigns anyway.

SEO software packages are not the panacea in achieving the much coveted first page of Google (or any other search engine for that matter!), and should only be used for a small fraction of the overall SEO strategy (mainly on-page optimization). Despite all of the above comments, these packages may help business owners new to SEO to gain an appreciation into some of the factors that go into on-page optimisation, however don’t be fooled into believing claims of ‘first page of Google’ other than by an experienced SEO consultant or company that can actually back up their claims.

Tags: search, optimisation, optimization, engines, Google, SEO, packages, software, automated

The diagram on the right shows an example of long-tail keywords in practice – for example although we get a proportion of our traffic for the competitive keyword phrase ‘web designers’, we get a lot more traffic combined from other less popular keyword phrases. There are various methods of targeting these long-tail keywords, either directly or indirectly.

You can target less popular keyword phrases directly by utilising search engine optimising techniques for the page, such as making sure the phrase appears in the title tag and on the body of the web page. You can also build the amount of inbound links to that page that contain the keyword phrase in the anchor text, boosting your link popularity and rankings for that phrase.

As many search engine optimisers espouse, ‘content is king’ – the more text-rich content you have on your website, the more potential visitors the search engines will pass to you. Provide guides around your subject, write articles, and as long as you stick to a relevant theme or topic then you will start to get visitors that use search terms you won’t ever have thought of. If you check your website statistics log to see what keyword phrases people have used to enter your site, you’re sure to be surprised, and will probably be amused when you see what some people type in!

Tags: long-tail keywords, keywords, website visitors, search engine traffic, search engines

The Wikipedia description for Digg is as follows:

A community-based popularity website with an emphasis on technology and science articles, recently expanding to a broader range of categories such as politics and entertainment.

The website incorporates features of social bookmarking, user rating systems and user networking. Digg and other social bookmarking websites should be taken seriously by websites and Companies looking to make a break onto the Internet publishing scene. Imagine you’ve written a really interesting press release or useful how-to article that you’ve published on your website – in addition to obtaining organic search engine visitors, by submitting the story to Digg you should gain a handful more visitors.

If enough Digg users like your story and give you enough “Diggs” then you could even be listed on the Digg homepage. Your ten minutes of fame (or more likely up to 24 hours) will catapult the amount of website visitors into many thousands – all I can say is to make sure your webserver can handle the traffic in advance! Some websites that have benefitted from Digg homepage stories have quoted roughly 40,000 visitors that day alone, and declining values (but still high) for the following few days. Due to the ‘story reviewing’ rather than ‘purchase making’ intentions of many Digg users, despite these high traffic levels, click through rates (CTRs) may actually decrease. It must also be mentioned that not every story you submit will be featured on the homepage, even if you go for a meager rate of 1 story in 500 being featured, it’s one of those strategies where the potential benefits are great with very minimal potential downsides.

In summary, social bookmarking and user rating sites such as Digg can be another useful tool in the website promoter’s arsenal.

Tags: what is digg, social bookmarking, web 2.0, digg, digg homepage

What Is A Search Engine Index?

Search engine indexing is the process whereby they include your website in their list of potential results that match a search query. For example when you type a phrase in Google, it searches its index, which is like a huge database containing billions and billions of web pages, and according to its highly sophisticated algorithms, it tries to return the websites at the top of the list that it thinks will be of most use to the visitor.

So How Do You Get Included In The Search Engines Index?

Search engines such as Google, Yahoo and MSN typically use two methods to include websites in their indexes. They don’t know about your website automatically, and they either have to be notified of its existance, or by discovering links to your website from other websites. To notify them that your website exists, you can submit your URL (your web address) to inform them. When you’re top in the queue to be spidered (the process of Google visiting your page and analysing all of the content), they will visit your website and you will start to be included in their index. This will then allow you to appear in the search results for certain terms. There is unfortunately no way to influence how quickly a website is included in the search engine indexes, however, by gaining links from other sites to your own, you can speed this process along. Here are the addresses you should go to to submit your website to the top three search engines:

• Google Add URL
• Yahoo Site Submit
• MSN Submission

Is My Website In The Search Engines Index?

To determine if your website is included in Google’s index (which had a market share of 44% of all web searches in July 2006), you should type these terms into Google (obviously replacing yourdomain.com with your own domain name):

site: http://www.yourdomain.com

If your website is included in their index then you will see that Google returns the amount of pages from your site that are included. So if you are included in the search engine index, but don’t rank well for your chosen keywords, then the problem is a ranking issue, which can be fixed by a solid marketing campaign. Our website promotion guide is an introduction to the essentials necessary for ranking highly in the search engines.

Tags: search engine index, index inclusion, website, search engines

Short-Term vs. Long-Term Results

It can sometimes take a significant amount of time to achieve free traffic from the search engines, and whilst you develop the strategies listed below, you can gain a ‘quick fix’ of website visitors by creating a Pay-Per-Click (PPC) campaign. PPC is run by many search engines however the big two are Yahoo Search Marketing (Overture) and Google Adwords. With both of these, you choose a bid amount for certain keywords and according to your bid the search engines display an advert of your choice in the “sponsored search” section of their website. In Google this is the pale yellow area at the top and right of the search results. Then when someone searches for a keyword phrase you’re bidding on, if they subsequently click on your ad, then you have to pay Google. Obviously the amount you bid should depend on the value to you of a potential sale (or lead), and your expected conversion rate. When starting a PPC campaign you’re obviously not sure of what your conversion rate is going to be, and so you should calculate the bid amount based on a ‘worst case’ scenario – perhaps try a 1% conversion rate. Using PPC will help boost your traffic quickly and in the short-term, however for long-term and best of all FREE results, carry on reading for more tips that will help you boost your visitor numbers.

Links, Links and More Links

Yes as the title suggests, all of the search engines (with particular emphasis on Google) value inbound links to your website. It is believed that Google won’t even include your website in its search engine if you don’t have at least one inbound link. In reality if you are in a competitive industry then you will need many more than just one link. Inbound links serve two purposes, firstly they drive traffic directly to your website from visitors who click on the link, and secondly they help to boost your rankings in the search engines. Without giving away too many trade secrets, it is safe to say that for websites that don’t naturally attract inbound links (unlike blogs for example), an inbound link building campaign should be high on your agenda. This can be done yourself, if you know where to look, or you can employ a search engine optimisation company such as ourselves, to do the legwork for you.

You may have heard of reciprocal links, whereby you place a link from your site to another site in exchange for a link to yours from theirs. These were all the rage up until a few years ago, until they were devalued by Google. You should now focus on getting one-way inbound links to your website.

How can you get people to link to your website with nothing in return? Well, as I said the approach varies dependent on the type of website. The best bet is to create useful and relevant content or features on your website (perhaps install a blog) that people will naturally link to. I’m sorry to say it but unless you’re a multinational company (in which case you probably wouldn’t be reading this), your 5-page company introductory website is unlikely to gain many inbound links without you putting some effort into getting them.

There are literally thousands of free web directories out there that allow you to submit your website to – first of all you should try and get included in those directories relevant to your industry. If you are in the electronics industry for example, you should run a search for “electronics directories” and many of the websites at the top of the results will allow you to submit your website to. There may be a cost for submission, however, and this needs to be weighed up against the advantages that the link will gain in terms of visitors and also search engine benefit. To weigh up the latter, you need to know quite a bit of advanced SEO stuff so if you’re operating a link building campaign involving paid submissions then you are best to use an SEO company as they will be able to maximise the return on your money.

Will any old link do the trick?

In terms of search engine benefit, no, not all links are equal. Avoiding the majority of the technical jargon, the best thing you can do is to make sure that the anchor text (ie: the text of the link that is highlighted and usually underlined) contains the keyword phrases you are trying to rank highly for. Quality is just as important a consideration as quantity of links.

Content Is King

A popular phrase that is often mentioned in SEO circles is that ‘content is king’. Basically, this means that it is the content (the actual text) of your website that play a large role in determining the success of your website in attracting high rankings and visitors. The more keyword-rich pages you have on your website, the more website visitors you will attract, as you will rank for a much wider variety of phrases. Ideally you should try and add content to your site regularly, particularly content which is useful and relevant to your target market. A blog would be a great starting point, allowing you to post articles and company notices regularly. You can post anything you like, from informative articles to press releases for example. It will also help to establish a level of credibility in the eyes of your customers, particularly if you include descriptions of your recent business successes and positive customer testiomonials.

Ladies & Gentlemen, Welcome To Web 2.0

Web 2.0 is a term that has gained much popularity recently, and encompasses the ‘next generation’ of websites such as social bookmarking sites (eg: del.icio.us), blogs, podcasts, social networking sites etc.. These should all be investigated and considered to make the most of free promotion strategies, however I consider that Digg can offer the most possible reward for the least effort, and so this is explained in more detail below:

Using Digg.com To Promote Your Website’s Content

Once you have written your latest article and posted it on your website, rather than sitting back and waiting days, weeks or even months for the search engines to find it and include it in their index, you can get visitors from day 1 by submitting the story to Digg for example. Digg is probably the most well known website of its type whereby users submit ‘news stories’ and Digg visitors can rate it by either giving the story a “Dig”, or they can “Bury” it. If you’ve just written a catchy and informative article that you think other users would benefit from then by all means submit it to Digg. At worst case you’ll probably get half a dozen website visitors who have clicked on your story link – and at the best case, if you’re story has hit the spot, then many people will Digg it, and visitors will increase exponentially if you’re lucky enough to be one of the popular stories featured on their homepage. It takes less than five minutes to submit your story, and is one of those strategies whereby the disadvantages are minimal, but the possible advantages are huge. Some really popular stories receive thousands of Dig’s, which means that they have probably received even many more visitors than this, as not everyone will ‘Dig’ the story after reading it.

To conclude, website promotion should be a consideration for every new website owner, and there are a variety of approaches that should be looked into. They range from content and link building to making the most of next generation Web 2.0 websites such as Digg and YouTube. With a bit of dedication and hard work, your website can become a valuable tool (if not an essential resource) in gaining extra publicity and ultimately sales.

If you need help with search engine optimisation or boosting the visitors
to your website then feel free to contact us to find out how we can help.

Tags: guide to website promotion, business owners, website promotion, increase visitors

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Tags: web promotion guide, boost profits, small business, smes, website visitors