e-commerce infos

A Guide To Google Adwords

The pay per click advertising arena is a complex place. As a Google adwords advertiser you compete in an auction every time a keyword prompts your ad to be shown. Many advertisers however do not realise how complex that auction is. Find out more about how Google Adwords ranks your ads and how you can establish a profitable strategy for your online business.

Understanding the Way Google Adwords Ranks PPC Bidders

An understanding of the way Google Adwords ranks PPC bidders is essential in establishing a profitable PPC strategy. Here is an overview on how Google ranks your ads:

1. Every time your ad is triggered an auction takes place. Google ranks the ads by Ad Rank. The Ad Rank is determined by the following calculation:

Ad Rank = ‘Maximum Cost Per Click’ x ‘Quality Score’

As you can see your ad rank is also determined by your Quality Score. This means a competitor who has a better quality score than yourself can actually rank above you for a lesser cost per click CPC.

Taking this into account it is your goal to achieve the highest possible position for the lowest possible cost. How should you go about doing this? Firstly you should understand what the quality score is and how you can achieve a good one.

Understanding the Quality Score

The way in which Google calculates your quality score is unknown. However Google do tell us many of the factors that determine your quality score:

1.A keyword’s click through rate CTR
2.The historical performance of that keyword
3.The relevance of text in your ad
4.The relevance of the keyword to its ad group
5.The quality of your landing page
6.Other relevancy factors.

Now that you know the fundamentals about how the Google Adwords auction operates; how can you leverage the competitive PPC arena in your favour?

Optimising Your Google Adwords Account

In recent times the competition for broad key terms such as ’shoes’ for example has skyrocketed resulting in higher cost per clicks for such terms.

By targeting more specific key terms such as ‘tennis shoes’ or ‘buy platform shoes’ where the competition is less aggressive you are able to capture a large amount of traffic for a substantially lower costperclick.

This is known as targeting the long tail of search. While the key terms that fall into the ‘long tail’ are searched for less often than those broader key terms at the ‘head’ there are far more specific keywords than there are broad key terms so it is possible to leverage the long tail to receive as much or even more traffic for substantially less money.

On top of the benefits above mining the long tail enables you to target your market more specifically. As a result this is likely to increase your quality score and in turn your return on investment ROI.

Achieving a Better Quality Score

If you have multiple products or services it is possible to group them separately into categorical groups and make each ad group’s ad text and landing page specific to each product/ service.

By creating advert text that better matches the users search query it is possible to increase the CTR. Moreover by creating tailored landing pages specific to the product/ products the user is searching for it is possible to increase the number of conversions.

The benefits described above all contribute to a better quality score. Because of this ranking algorithm it is possible for advertisers with a good click through rate to achieve a higher position for a lower CPC than their competition and hence long tail adverts often appear higher in the Google results than general keywords even though they are paying less per click.

Summary

Optimising a PPC account to achieve optimal results can be a very complex process. Firstly you will need to build the long tail. This will involve a lot of keyword research taking into account category and product keywords localization common spelling mistakes call to action keywords etc.

Secondly to make the most of those long tail keywords an advertiser will need to have very specific ad text. When dealing with hundreds of products it is tricky to generate a unique text ad and landing page for each one but this is essential in maintaining a good CTR. PPC management companies will often have their own inhouse tools to achieve this.

Testing ad text variations and testing landing pages are also important steps in achieving the most from your advertising spend. However the most important step is measuring and managing the ROI on each keyword. Since the PPC arena is a constantly changing environment constant monitoring is essential. The value of every keyword is constantly changing therefore it is essential that you work on a keyword management strategy to deal with this. Bid management tools can be especially helpful here or a third party PPC Management Company.

About the writer:  Sayu specialize in PPC services. By utilizing advanced statistical techniques long tail marketing and proprietary bidding software we can reduce advertising spend and increase the quantity and quality of traffic that is provided by a client’s Internet advertising campaigns. Sayu are currently offering a 30day trial of their PPC services. For more information please see http://www.sayu.co.uk/ppcmanagement.html

Using Blogs And Forums For Free Traffic

For every subject that you can possibly imagine and probably a few that you would most likely never want to imagine there are people gathered on the Internet on blog and forum sites who are discussing it… at great length.

You can bet that no matter what the topic of your website or what product or service that you are selling that somewhere and probably a lot of somewheres people are discussing it right now as we speak on blogs and forums on the Internet.

Whatever your product or service is there is a specific group of people who are the most likely to buy it. These are the ones who are gathered on blogs and forums discussing a topic for which your product or service is an answer to their problem. I use the word “problem” rather loosely here. “Problem” covers anything that a person wants but doesn’t have… whether that thing is a new pair of jeans a cure for cancer or anything in between. Problems are simply things that people want but don’t have…and your product is obviously one of those things…at least for some of them. Now your mission is to find these people.

Go to your favorite search engine and in the search box type in your key words followed by the word: forums. Hit search. You will be amazed at the number of forums on which your potential customers are discussing the topic that you are most interested in and the one where your product can actually be of service.

Repeat the search using the word: blogs behind your key words. You will likely get just as many hits using that term.

Now out of these two searches that you have done choose the top 4 or 5 sites of each search that come up in the results. Visit these sites and determine if they are in fact discussing the topic that your product relates to. Choose three or four of the most active forums or blogs. Active meaning those who have had the most posts made to them in the last 24 hour period or who have the largest number of members listed. Join the sites.

Remember that posting to blogs and forums is a time consuming task. It is an important task and it is a task that will help to drive traffic to your website but I assure you it IS time consuming. For each and every blog and forum site that you join you will need to post 3 to 5 times each week and each post will consist of at least 300 words probably more.

This is important! Do NOT start out posting blatant advertisements for your product or for your website. Think of each blog and forum as a neighborhood that you have just moved into. The people on each site will most likely know one another well and you will be the new kid on the block so act like it.

Posting advertisements for your product or for your website is just rude. They will likely be removed by the blog or forum administrator as will you be removed from the membership list. Advertisements are generally banned from all blog and forum sites.

What you can and should do is include your website address in your signature tag. That is not considered an advertisement. It is simply a part of your identity and is viewed as such by the administrators as well as the members of blogs and forums.

You are going to have to go slow here. Introduce yourself to the group. Take your time to get to know each of the members who are the most active and who exert the most influence within the group.

Remember that your posts need to be thoughtful considerate and helpful to other members and must never EVER appear to be advertisements for your website or for your products. You can suggest your products as solutions for problems within your posts but they must not look like advertisements. They must appear to be of the friendhelpingafriend variety.

You may be tempted to use articles that you have written as blog or forum posts and sort of get more bang for your buck so to speak…don’t. Articles and blog or forum posts are two different animals…and they are not interchangeable. The other reason for never using an article as a blog or forum posts is that search engine spiders may well identify one or the other as duplicate content. Duplicate content is NOT a good thing. Just don’t do it.

Never include links to your website within the body of your posts to blogs and forums. This can be construed as advertising and it can get you tossed out on your ear. You must be satisfied with the link to your website that will appear just below you name in your signature tag at the end of each post.

You can safely rely on the human trait of curiosity to insure that the members of the blogs and forums will click on the link to your website in your signature tag. Most people come with a healthy and builtin supply of curiosity. They will not be able to resist clicking on the link below you name at least once.

If they find something that will provide them with an answer to a problem while they are visiting your website out of curiosity they will return time and again.

We haven’t discussed your website content and we don’t have time to now but let me tell you that content really is king when you are talking about website traffic. You must not use articles that you have submitted to article banks and you must not use your blog or forum posts as content for your website. Be sure however that your website is loaded with a lot of good and relevant content.

Posting to blogs and forums who’s topics relate to the topic of your website or to your product or service is an excellent way to create website traffic and do it for free.

About the writer:nbsp;nbsp;Pj GermainAffiliateSuccess.Org The Last Membership You’ll ever need!

12 Design Tips For A Successful Website

Here are 12 design tips every small business owner should know when designing a new website. Put simply they will determine whether your site receives traffic and converts to sales or not.

1. Know Your Audience
Be very clear about your target audience and ask key questions which will affect the design. What of the audience is likely to have DSL or Broadband as this will affect whether you use large files. What is likely to be elderly as this will affect the font size. What are young versus older as this will affect the tone of voice.

2. Fast Loading
Around 80 of web traffic comes from search engines. That means people land on your site and expect to find what they want quickly. Ensure the homepage loads within a maximum of seven seconds. If users have to wait for your page to load they will bounce off the site and go to the next site that appeared on the search result list.

3. Clarity
The purpose of your site and what you are selling should be clear within 710 seconds. If a user needs to click on a link or play with the navigation in order to figure out what you are selling you will lose visitors in large numbers.

4. Less is More
A simple and uncluttered site with a singleminded message on each page makes for the best web experience. Avoid trying to include too much information on one page. Ask yourself What is the one thing I want the visitor to think and then do on this page.

5. Avoid Design Overload
Avoid filling your site with lots of whizzy graphic devices. Certainly avoid music in the background if it does not annoy the visitor in the first visit it certainly will in the second. Never have more than one animated device on a page as it is too distracting.

6. Showcase the Product
If you are selling a beautiful product such as a golf course a resort hotel or restaurant avail of the latest macro flash technology. Flash viewers are now ubiquitous with almost 90 of browsers containing the plugin. Use this to showcase your product as small photos often will not do your product justice.

7. Simple Navigation
Navigation should be simple and intuitive. A child should be able to immediately understand how to find the information. A person visiting your site should never be more than three clicks away from what they want.

8. Comparison
You should always keep an eye on what your competitors and the companies you aspire to emulate are doing on their websites. Bookmark them all and visit once a month. Incorporate any new ideas from their site into your site.

9. Online Sales
If you are selling on your site ensure your users are never more than two clicks away from ordering the product.

10. On Brand
In a few words describe the personality of your brand. Ask yourself what tone of voice and what kind of experience your customers expect online. Ensure your web designers understand how to translate your offline brand to your website. Ask them how they will go about it.

11. Visitors and Conversion Data
Ensure you have webtracking software which will tell you:
How many visitors go to the site daily
What town region or country they are from
How many get past the home page and what pages they tend to look at or rarely visit
What of visitors convert to sales

This is vitally important data to help you refine your website. For example if you discover that only 20 of visitors go beyond the homepage that is a big issue. Or if you can see that very few users visit a key page that explains the benefits of your product your conversion rate will be low. This information provides the guidance you need to refine and optimize your site design.

12. Think of Traffic
Finally and most importantly always design your site with traffic in mind. Many small businesses make the mistake of designing their website and then start thinking about driving traffic to it. The problem is that the way you design your site can result in your site being ignored by the search engine spiders meaning you will receive very little traffic. It is estimated that for a typical site 80 of web traffic tends to come from search engines. When designing your site improve your SEO search engine optimization performance by ensuring you avoid the certain pitfalls. Ask your marketing agency to confirm that they have avoided the following:

Avoid flash sites. Sites are designed in either HTML or flash. Search engine spiders sent to index your site cannot read flash.

No frames. Spiders cannot read what is inside a frame so you will not be indexed and noticed by search engines.

No dynamic pages. Some sites are developed with a database which generates dynamic pages. You can tell if there are dynamic pages on your site if there is a ? within the page URL. Again spiders cannot read dynamic pages.

Text within graphics. To ensure text is read uniformly by different browsers design agencies often put text within a graphic. It looks great. However a spider cannot read what text that is in a graphic and simply moves on.

About the writer:  Evan Mangan is a former Head of European Marketing for Yahoo! Mobile and is Managing Director of http://www.MarketingSmallBusiness.co.uk a marketing agency which makes major brand marketing techniques available to smaller companies. For a free audit of your website visit http://www.MarketingSmallBusiness.co.uk