From the category archives:
Marketing is so much easier these days for many, many businesses.
In the olden days* (* pre Internet), businesses had to go searching for their customers.
Now customers go searching for the business.
Marketing has changed from searching for customers to being found.
Can you be found if your customer searches for you?
Because that’s what business marketing is these days.
Cheers,
Over the past week or so I’ve been planning out my business goals for 2012.
A fair bit of that involves what Google is doing because, whether we like it or not, Google is a big part of our business.
Here’s a video I did back in 2006 explaining the very basics of getting to the top of Google.
Wow, how times have changed.
The changes Google have implemented and are planning on implementing make the old strategies almost redundant.
The only serious competitor I can see to Google’s domination is Facebook.
Just about every business needs to have a presence on those 2 to be successful.
Cheers,
Just redoing a few sites so they’re a bit neater and easy to understand for searching – first off the rank is for Gold Coast Accountants at Oculus Group. He likes the idea of being the world’s best accountant!
The Director (David de Closey) is a mate of mine who’s a mad keen triathlete and sometime public speaker.
He’s still a bit angry with me because at a recent charity night he got bumped from the speakers because of me.
Say it with me: Ha!
Cheers,
I spend half my time trying to keep up with the latest and greatest from Google and Social Media.
I’ve just noticed that Google have launched a new way they show web site links on their search results page that means it’s more important than ever to get to the top.
As you’ll see by the graphic below, Google showing of internal site links has the effects of pushing the other results down the page (doesn’t happen with all searches though).
And that’s bad if you’re in position # 2 or 3 or more.
It’s now more improtant than ever to get a high ranking in Google – critical if you’re a web based business.
Cheers,
We spend a lot of time analysing what’s happening in the world of Google, specifically how and why Google is ranking sites highly.
If you look at Google search results these days you’ll notice that Google Places listings take up a big part of the page (when you do a search for a specific location – i.e mechanics Gold Coast).
Click image for full size
Social Media mentions seems to be impacting on rankings – no big surprise there. Google’s always looking for clues on what your site is about and what the most popular sites are. Social media mentions is just another indicator.
Aside from those 2 factors, the basics remain the same.
Cheers,
Because I’ve had a fair bit of success over the years getting sites highly ranked in Google, tons of people ask me for the best resources to learn how to do it themselves or the best tools to use.
I point them to the same guy I’ve been recommending for close on 7 years.
Aaron Wall runs SEO Book, THE resource for people looking to get great search engine rankings.
A few years back I put together a daggy little video promoting Aaron’s book he had at the time. He’s since moved from the book to developing a thriving community for people looking for information about getting high rankings in the search engines.
I leave it up because I figure it’s a good endorsement of what Aaron’s doing now.
Cheers,
I’ve had a few emails and calls regarding this blog post about Google AdWords advertising from a couple of days ago.
The main question being how do you get campaigns so efficient.
Well, the first answer to that is start measuring what happens on your site.
Here’s an email I sent a client today (I’ve stripped out the identifying stuff obviously) – it might give you an idea of what you can do to measure the effectiveness of what you’re doing with your web site generally, and Google AdWords specifically.
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A note on how we can now measure the effectiveness of the web site:
In the AdWords campaign yesterday, we set up 4 pages:
*Action 1 thank you
* Action 2 thank you
* Action 3 thank you
* Action 4 thank you
and applied conversion code to them.
What this tells us is how many times the forms have been used as a direct result of the Adwords.
If you look at today (11/11/2010) numbers, you’ll see that right now (8.57 am) you’ve spent $41.25 for 4 conversions.
And you’ll see they’re all from the ******* campaign.
So each conversion has cost you $10.31.
Goals in Google Analytics
In addition to those conversion, in Google Analytics (Go to the Reporting Tab, then down to Google Analytics) we have set up ‘Goals’.
That is, each time these 4 thank you pages are visited is counted as a goal.
If you dig down a bit (by clicking Goals in the left side menu), you’ll see that for yesterday we had 12 goals reached:
* 3 for Action 1
* 1 for Action 2
* 5 for Action 3
* 3 for Action 4
Goals are different from Conversions in that Goals are overall for the site.
Conversions are the leads generated by only the Google AdWords.
Make sense?
Now importantly, don’t just count the conversions and goals as the end result.
You’ll also have telephone calls, word of mouth referrals, etc generating in from web site visitors.
And, very importantly, with the unique content and positioning of that content you’ll also benefit substantially from increased branding benefits.
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Hope that helps you develop a more efficient AdWords campaign.
There’s lots more to a great campaign than the above, but if you can measure the effectiveness of what you’re doing you’ll have the information to make better decisions.
Cheers
Brendon
Cheers,
The two Internet industry giants, but search minnows, Yahoo and Bing (Microsoft) are moving into a search alliance to try and have a crack at search engine giant Google.
Hopefully, the alliance will provide some competition to Google because that competition will result in a range of benefits for the general online business and searcher.
The move is set to happen in September.
From what I’ve been reading:
Now, those 2 things might not matter too much – after all, being # 1 in Yahoo or Bing isn’t half as valuable as a # 1 Google ranking.
My hope is that the extra competition results in lower Pay Per Click advertising, better service from all and more products being offered to users of all services.
Cheers.
Brendon
Cheers,
Web Design Business Kit
by Brendon Sinclair
