A potential pitfall for many new Adwords advertising is simply the false pretense that Google’s default Adwords settings are in the best interest for all advertisers. That’s simply not the case. Here are a handful of tips that can take just minutes but provide a significant lift in your online advertising campaign performance. 1. Review your location and language settings Google defaults each new campaign to target theUnited StatesandCanada. If you don’t ship internationally, this is a clear opportunity to narrow your targeting. If you are a localized business serving a specific area there is further opportunity to narrow in your focus by targeting a specific state, city or even specific mile radius surrounding your business location. Advanced Tip* If you are targeting multiple countries, set up separate campaigns for each country. Each geographic area will perform differently due to variances in search behavior. Separate campaigns will provide you much deeper insight into each location’s performance and allow for smarter decisions – Read the full article
Google’s quest for perfection in search results has led the tech giant back to the drawing board to once again tinker with its AdWords algorithm. The goal remains the same: to deliver users to the most relevant content available that fits their chosen search words while also attracting advertisers by delivering superior return on investment for online advertising. Google Adwords auctions control the “promoted search results” seen at the top and to the right of the organic search results; however, Google and businesses lose customers when those results are of poor quality, because people have no use for spam and will use other search engines. To avoid this, Google offers lower prices to advertisers who have higher rankings as determined by its algorithms. In short, this keyword auction wherein advertisers bid on keywords relevant to their businesses is the way Google makes ad revenue without disappointing search clients. This process is somewhat contentious considering that the real high-quality material should – Read the full article
When researching or choosing a product or service, visitors typically follow a keyword path. This keyword path can be used to help inform your SEO campaigns. For example, let’s imagine we have an imaginary visitor who is trying to choose a digital camera. Our visitor might start off by researching digital cameras. In Google, they will search upon the keywords “digital cameras”. They might complete some research, read some reviews, and decide upon a make of camera – let’s say they have decided upon a Nikon. Let’s now imagine that our visitor will now carry out a search for “Nikon digital cameras” and following further research, eventually decides upon a Nikon P100. Finally, at this stage, the visitor will carry out searches for “Nikon P100 prices”, which now indicates they are ready to buy and are carrying out price checks online. This keyword path will typically apply in most sectors, and your job as a website owner is to figure – Read the full article
Small businesses have a daunting task as they compete with larger companies that boast more resources and staff. How can a small business compete for a share of the search engine market with so much stacked against them? Here are some tips on creating an SEO strategy for your small business: Learn from the Competition Promodo’s SEO specialist Anna Moseva suggests starting your small business SEO strategy with a thorough analysis of the competition. You’re probably familiar with piecing together keywords on Google in order to figure out what people are searching for and what’s already out there by way of content, but Moseva advises that you take the top 20 results in Google and analyze their Alexa Rank with the SEO Quake plugin for Firefox. Once you know the top sites among your competition, you can analyze the kind of traffic they generate and which keywords and adwords are linked to their sites at SEM Rush. This technique will – Read the full article
It seems that competition for valuable branded keywords is reaching an all time high, with a recent report by eMarketer, “Brands Go Head-to-Head in Competition for Search Terms,” estimating that US marketers will spend a massive $14.4 billion USD this year on search advertising. Why should you care? Because it’s your brand’s keywords that they’re bidding on. The Battle of Branded Keywords We all know that search engine optimization is based on attempting to reach a top ranking position on a search engine for a given keyword or keyword phrase. We also know that the introduction of Google’s Adwords and Bing’s adCenter offered companies a major opportunity to feature on page one results for a search term without bothering with all this; they could bid on a term and grab traffic without engaging in the arduous process of link building and on and off site optimization. Recently, however, things have developed one step further and brand managers have started to – Read the full article
SEO isn’t for banal and unpopular niches—this is what some business owners believed when I first introduced them to search engine optimization. They thought SEO was only for popular businesses that people regularly search. So I explained that this notion was one big fallacy. I even elaborated that banal and unpopular niches were the ones that needed SEO the most. So you heard it right. SEO is for banal and unpopular niches. Actually, one of the reasons why SEO was created was to promote businesses that were still unheard and unpopular to people. During the early years of search engine optimization, it was actually the businesses and companies from the not-so-popular industries that made use of SEO’s capability to rule the then-uncrowded search engines. SEO Methods to Promote your Unheard Niche: Keyword research Through extensive and proper keyword research, banal niches can find their market with ease. Keywords are like map pins on search engines: they give you an idea – Read the full article
Increasingly, people are accessing the Web from smartphones, tablets, and other mobile devices. It’s not just the desktop and laptop anymore. This means that, as a business owner, Internet marketer, or SEO professional, you have to come up with a search engine optimization strategy that’s specific to mobile – a strategy that will help you get found online more easily and quickly. Let smartphone users and mobile consumers find you whenever they search. Here’s a mobile SEO checklist to get you started: Plan for it. Set a strategy, identify your targets, and plan accordingly. Like any other SEO campaign, successful mobile marketing takes plenty of research and preparation. Know the various mobile search engines. There’s Google XHTML, Google Mobile, Bing Mobile, Yahoo! Mobile, AOL Mobile, and abphone – among many others. Familiarize yourself with these by using your own mobile phone or tablet device. “Mobilize” your website. There are plenty of plug-ins and tools for building a mobile version of – Read the full article
The Facebook “Like” button has a new friend. Or rather, a new “competitor”. After a series of unsuccessful attempts to incorporate social into search – such as Orkut, Buzz, Wave – Google is launching what observers believe can serve as a rival product to Facebook’s “Like” button. It’s called the Google “+1” Button. In an announcement made last week on the official Google blog, the search engine giant is rolling out the new +1 button as a way for users to share their recommendations to others, as well as to give a “public stamp of approval” on search results and linked sites that they like. This then enables other Google users to find more relevant – and more social – search results. “Sometimes it’s easier to find exactly what you’re looking for when someone you know already found it,” reads the explanation on the Google +1 Button page. “Get recommendations for the things that interest you, right when you want – Read the full article
