Google Adwords

WRONG!

Do you really think it is that easy? Let’s get a grip here for a minute, the world and their dogs would be doing it, if it was that easy!

A more accurate representation would be: Write a small advert for your website, pick your keywords, submit. Result – Fair amount of visitors to your website, no sales to speak of, or even at all, cost a fortune. Result:  Won’t be doing that again in a hurry.

Do not worry, because by following some simple steps, you can get right back on track. Read on and let us help you succeed with Google Adwords.

There are several factors to be considered when planning a successful Google Adwords campaign. Each one of equal importance. However, Keywords are the common factor of all.

The first aspect to take into consideration, before planning your campaign, is the Google Adwords Quality Score. The Quality score is awarded on keyword relevance. The keywords used to trigger the Adwords adverts must be relevant firstly to the Adwords advert, but of equal importance, the page the visitor lands on must also be accurate and related to the initial search, too.

The reason being, that Google are not stupid. There are literally thousands of advertisers out there, looking to gain an advantage over all their competitors – so Google will ensure that when they send a visitor to your website, via your campaign, that your website is ABSOLUTELY related to their search.

Why is this so important?

Well, think about it. Google are a multi-billion dollar corporation. Their reputation relies solely on the quality of their searches. If they allow unrelated websites, for particular searches, then their validation, and reputation of their  search engine infrastructure would go down the drain – overnight. You think they are going to allow that? Of course not. Hell would freeze over first.

So, ensuring that your adverts don’t just lead to your homepage, but to the URL that the keywords are relevant to is of utmost importance, too. You need to achieve as high a quality score as possible for greatest results, as the higher the quality score, the higher position the Adwords advert will achieve and also the lower the cost per click, adverts with a higher click through rate will be shown more often.

Quality Score – The New Benchmark

Low quality scores as well as being higher cost per click, can result in the advert not being shown or account suspension, either temporary or permanent, so adhering to the guidelines is crucial. With that in mind, we now know to choose our keywords carefully. Use the Google content keyword tool to check whether Google thinks your chosen keywords are relevant before submitting them for use with your Adwords campaign.

Now we know that the most relevant factor for a successful Adwords campaign is keywords, so we need to look at which keywords to choose to trigger your Adwords adverts.

Using the Adwords keyword research tool, which you probably have done already to identify searched keywords for your items, you have probably selected the high volume searched keywords. These are the keywords that will have cost you dearly, as these keywords are also the ones with the higher competition. They will also produce a low conversion rate; this is because they are less targeted keywords. To achieve success, higher click through at lower cost per click and good conversion rate, you need to target lower searched keywords or key phrases. Key phrases are the most effective, as they tend to be more descriptive, therefore closer to what the searcher is looking for.

Example: Football badges has a high search volume, so will cost more per click and has a lesser chance of converting to a sale than Chelsea Football Badges. If a person types in Chelsea Football Badges and your Key phrase is Chelsea football badges, and your Adwords advert includes these keywords also, you are far more likely to get a sale at a much cheaper cost per click. Revising your keywords so that they are highly relevant to your page content, rather than your overall site content is your true aim.

Use the Google Adwords keyword tool to find an exact match, or phrase match, to help you identify lesser searched keywords, or preferably key phrases with lower advertising competition to streamline your Adwords campaign. (Not forgetting to check the relevance of your keywords with the website content feature). Providing you have a good, overall advert, and quality landing page, then you are on the road to success.

As has been said previously, the keywords that trigger the adverts must be relevant to the advert itself.  So, it is important to include the keywords in the advert. If you notice, when you do a search on Google, the keywords you have searched for show up in bold on the Adwords adverts, making them more visible. If you have used a keyphrase such as Chelsea Football Badges it is a good idea to use this as your Advert title. This will then be emboldened and your advert will stand out more. Another good tip for writing a good advert is to show a price that is including the price of the item in the title – this also gives you more chance of achieving the click through to your website.

Avoid the timewasters!

The reason this works, is because it will also save you money on your campaigns – Why? Because if you are showing the price, then potential ‘clickers’ will either be interested, or not. They will already know what the price is, so if they are not in the ‘ball-park’ of that price range, they will not click your advertisement – therefore saving you money, and saving you from ‘timewasters’.

Adverts need to be compelling, and you need to entice the searcher to click on them. Words that attract are often advertised as features or benefits; ‘free’ or ‘discount’ are good compelling words; ‘buy one get one free’ is also used to good affect.

Spend some time browsing other Google Adwords adverts to see which make you want to go and look or might make you want to buy. Take ideas and tips from them. Learn how to write good Adwords adverts. After all, it is the combination of all these factors that bring the click through to the sale – and this is what you need to achieve for a successful campaign.

Trialling keywords and adverts for a period of time and running others to see which are more effective is a good idea, don’t just settle for mediocre results, when you can always improve and always achieve higher.

Don’t lose your shirt!

It is all too easy to get caught up in the moment when trying something new, and exciting. And let’s face it, when you know you are pretty much guaranteed to increase your visitor count, via Adwords, then it is all too easy to get carried away.

Very many people have lost a LOT of money using Google Adwords – and this this because they have not followed some simple, fundamental rules:

1. Know how much you can afford to LOSE.

That’s right. There is a chance your Google campaign might not work, and therefore only be prepared to ‘bid’ what you are prepared to lose. For example, if you have a £200 advertising budget, then make sure you stick to it – UNTIL you have ended the campaign, and have analysed the results, and KNOW that it is a worthwhile campaign – hence you can then increase your budget.

2. Start your keyword bidding SMALL.

Start small, and then gradually increase, depending on what you can afford, and your desired search positions. It is quite possible that for some of your potential keywords, you could be paying £1 a click, but by paying 50 pence a click you may well receive less click-throughs, but you are also paying levels that you can afford – again, until you have analysed your results, to see what works.

3. Always be checking, and testing your campaigns.

Chances are, that you will not just be able to create an Adwords account, and start flying high from day one. No, what is more likely, is you will receive a variety of different results. Some expected, and some maybe not. BUT, you must check your results; then you can tweak your bidding amounts, keywords and content, to create the desired effect – the right results.

Adwords is not for everybody – not by any stretch, but if used properly, and with a degree of caution, you could quickly be creating campaigns, that not only bring in great traffic – but bring in substantial sales.

Good look, and remember to test!

Karen Batty

One of the temptations is to just think “oh my business probably can’t really benefit from using Twitter, so I won’t bother”. You’ve seen it on the news and heard all about it, but yet you think it’s not for you – this could prove very costly.

On a personal level I am not a big fan of Twitter, but from a business point of view I am a huge fan. Say for example you run an ecommerce retail shop. You could create 2 separate accounts, one for yourself as an entrepreneur to connect with lots of other entrepreneurs, and the second account purely for your ecommerce business.

What Could You Then Do With These Twitter Accounts?

The first one you could use purely to build up business2business relationships, connect with other entrepreneurs, suppliers, marketers, consultants etc. From following them and communicating with them you could learn heaps of stuff and you never know what opportunities you may open.

The second account could be for your customers and website visitors to follow. You could then communicate directly with them on an individual personal level, just sending them a message to check they were happy with their order could do wonders for their loyalty! But even more powerful perhaps, would be when you have special offers or new products. Tweeting about them will instantly open you up to lots of highly targetted potential customers who are following you. Now your brain is starting to imagine the possibilities!

Need Help With Twitter?

If you’ve never used twitter, or are using it but not very successfully then there is lots of information available. You can either buy a book from Amazon, they have quite a few available for under a tenner (at time of writing) and you can also read reviews as to whether they are any good. Or you can search the web for advice and build up your knowledge that way from articles on blogs and other information sites.

Social media is now a big part of the web, and thankfully ecommerce websites can take advantage of it. Social networking is a much more popular activity then social bookmarking services but all are still worth utilising.

Benefits
Not only will they give you bursts of traffic but they can also help build inbound links, some of which will help your SEO campaign. Although time is required to maximise the potential of these services it is completely free.

Limitations
The nature of social media means bursts of traffic will be very short lived, so one day you could get 1,000 visitors from a great article which has became popular on stumbleupon, the next day you could get 5 visitors. Visitors from social media sites traditionally don’t convert as well as more targetted visitors from search engines – so chuck your 1.5% conversion rate target out the window for social media traffic.

Weighing Up The Pros and Cons
All-in-all I am a big fan of social media and think it is worthwhile using it to increase traffic and inbound links to your ecommerce website, despite the limitations. It is also a rapidly growing sector of the web so it is good to get involved now as who knows how much it will grow.

Integrating Into Your Website
You can start by joining services such as digg, stumbleupon and reddit to begin building links. Remember to use the services properly though, submit quality content and become an active member of the community, spam will get you nowhere over the long-term (apart from give you a terrible reputation).

You can also add buttons to your website so visitors can bookmark your pages on sites like delicious, and submit pages to social media sites. Services like addthis are a good one to use because the button can take up very little space but has lots of functions.

You could also start to use twitter, although I would use this more as an individual to build up business contacts rather then promote your ecommerce website to potential customers.

Conclusion
If you want to start increasing traffic via social media then get together a full plan of how you are going to harness it effectively, but also in an ethical way (IE not spamming, being a genuine member of the services). And also how you want the social media buttons on your website to work and have an effect. As with an aspect of your business approach it properly and professionally with a decent plan and you can have a good crack at it.

PPCWebSpy is a tool to see what keywords Google Adwords advertisers are targetting and how much they are spending on those keywords. It’s a great way to see what your competition is doing compared to you.

Even if you currently aren’t using Google Adwords it may be useful to see what other advertisers are up to. See how much money they are putting into their campaigns so you know for future reference when you can start using Adwords. You may also be able to locate phrases that aren’t being targetted much so you could take advantage of them to get low cost clicks!

To use the tool all you need to have is the Firefox web browser installed. It is better than Windows IE anyway so if you haven’t already I recommend you download it regardless of whether you want to use the PPC tool or not.

How To Get PPCWebSpy

• Visit the PPCWebSpy website and watch the video so you appreciate exactly what tool does.
• Scroll to the bottom, and enter your name, email address and create a password.
• You then go to a page showing you a video trying to get you to upgrade to the ‘Platinum version’, which costs $97 (£66 at time of writing). In the beginning I wouldn’t bother upgrading, you want to use the tool for a while first to get used to it and see for yourself it is reliable, useful etc.

  However I would recommend you watch the video anyway, just for future reference so you know the difference between the free software and the paid version. As your business grows it may make sense to upgrade to the platinum version.

  Scroll to the bottom and click ‘No thanks’ (unless you want to upgrade right away of course).

• Then you go to another page, which then trys to sell you the ‘Gold version’ for $47, once again skip it and scroll to the bottom and click ‘No thanks’.
• Then it gives you the instructions for how to download the tool, and away you go!

I think it is a really good tool to have. Even if it is only to see what your competitors are up to. And if you are using Google Adwords then this could help you identify good-value keywords and keep you away from the costly ones.

Get In The Newspapers!

Press releases are great for a quick burst of highly targetted traffic, but they can also have other more long-term benefits.

Here are two different ways to use the press release marketing method:

1. To get recognised and published in the online and offline media sending you a burst of traffic – to achieve this make sure your story is newsworthy, it has to be something big your business is doing E.G launching a new product which has benefits like no other product.
         You will have to write a great press release to get good press coverage, reporters get sent lots of press releases every day so you need to write a good one from the title all the way down to the last sentence.
2. To build up quality inbounds to your website helping your long-term SEO targets – sending out press releases online to lots of websites and press release services can gain you some valuable and highly targetted inbounds at very little cost.
         Some press release services offer paid services, for your money your press release can even be published by Google News gaining you a quality inbound and thousands of potential readers. This method can be done more often than Method 1 above so your story doesn’t have to be as ground breaking. It won’t send you as many visitors as Method 1 but long-term it will help your SEO efforts which in turn will send you lots of visitors every week.

When I completed the recent Dropship Help upgrades I sent out a press release to pressbox (read the release) it only took about 10 minutes to write and submit and I now have an extra inbound to the website. If you type ‘dropshiphelp.co.uk’ into Google the pressbox page comes up as the 8th out of 366 pages. This is an example of using a press release just to get an inbound link for your website.

If you don’t know how to write press releases or where to publish them then search around the web and fill yourself with the relevant knowledge so you can get in the media and build valuable inbound links to your ecommerce website!

Marketing No No's!

Getting highly targetted visitors to your ecommerce website isn’t easy (unless you’ve got thousands of pounds to spend), this results in people doing everything they can to get any visitors – but some marketing practices are best avoided!

Here are 7 ways NOT to promote your ecommerce shop: 

1. Spam – you should never ever spam, whether it is via email, forums, blogs or whatever. It makes you look like an idiot, your website look unprofessional and it results in very few visitors anyway!
2. Too Many Link Exchanges – a few targetted link exchanges with established quality websites are recommended, however don’t go doing hundreds of link exchanges with any old crappy websites, it will harm your website, not benefit it.
3. Use FFA’s – FFA stands for ‘free-for-all’, sites where you can just submit your link and it is instantly live amongst hundreds of other irrelevant links. This will harm your website, result in no visitors and waste your time.
4. Use Autosurfers – members of autosurf websites very rarely view the actual sites they are supposed to in order to earn credits, and if they do the chances of them being interested in your website is incredibly small.
5. Join Banner Exchanges – these make your website look ugly and unprofessional and result in very little traffic, your banners on other websites will also get very few clicks due to webmasters sticking them deep out of visitors view.
6. Practice Blackhat SEO – eventually google will get you and your website will disappear from search results resulting in no traffic from the major traffic source. Never practice blackhat SEO!
7. Stop Marketing - never stop promoting and improving your existing marketing methods.

So there you have 7 sure fire ways to waste your time and damage your business. If you are doing any of the above then stop now and start using your time more wisely.