Peter James – WSI Digital Marketing Consultant

Some time ago, I posted an article on search marketing.  I’ve recently helped quite a few clients who’ve been using Google AdWords to advertise their business online.  In many cases their adverts have not been working well for them.  Therefore, I’m giving a few tips to help you plan and manage your search advertising better.  There’s more that you need to do but these are the basic things that I’ve seen people get wrong.

Planning an Adwords Campaign

1. Think Like Your Customers.  What terms are they likely to use for when searching for the products and services that you provide.  Use a keyword tool to build up a list of these and similar terms.
2. Research Your Keywords.  How many searches are there for each keyword every day and how many (competing) sites feature these keywords?
3. Set Your Budget.  Research how much the keywords cost for PPC and plan a sensible budget so that you can capture a decent amount of traffic.
4. Design Your Adverts.  Look at similar adverts for those keywords from competitors.  Make your Ads compelling and have at least 4 (so you can find out which are the most effective and tune them).
5. Build/Select Your Landing Pages.  Make sure that ad clicks lead through to appropriate landing pages in your website.

Managing An Adwords Campaign

1. Google Analytics.  Make sure that your Adwords account is linked to your Google Analytics account and that auto-tagging is enabled.
2. Monitor & Measure.  Check your Google Analytics and your AdWords account every day for the first week and then at least weekly for the following…
   • Is your bounce rate on landing pages less than 50%?
   • Are your conversions justifying the advertising investment?
   • Which adverts and keywords are performing best?
3. Modify & Improve.
   • If you have a high bounce rate then visitors aren’t finding what they’re looking for so either modify your landing page or your adverts/keywords.
   • Look at which adverts and keywords are performing best and either improve or remove the ones that aren’t working.
   • Make sure that your investment is brining you either more sales or more leads.

If you want any advice or help then please contact me.

Do you know how well your website is working for your business?  How often do you give it a health check?  This article is an overview of the things you need to check to ensure that your website is delivering return on investment for your business.

Google Analytics

You should check Google Analytics at least once a week.  This will give you an understanding of how visitors are finding your website and what they’re doing there.  The sorts of things you should be looking at include…

1. Has there been a significant change in visitor numbers?  If there has been then you need to investigate and find out the reason.
2. Where are your visitors coming from and how are they finding you?
3. What is the bounce rate for your landing pages?  If it’s more than 50% then you need to address this (unless the page is a blog).
4. Check your goal achievements.
5. If you are using Google Adwords then the account should be linked to Google Analytics.  You should examine how your keywords and ads are performing.  Bounce rate and goal achievement is crucial here because you’re paying for those visits!

WebScan

WebScan is a tool I use to analyse websites and identify what issues need to be addressed.  You should run such an analysis on your website at least once every three months.   These are some of the things you need to check…

1. Are there any broken links or missing files?
2. Do your keywords, titles, headings, link names and alternative text match terms that prospective visitors might be searching for?
3. Is your website updated with fresh and dated content at least once a month?
4. Are descriptions (which appear in search engine results) clear and compelling?
5. Are you gaining more inward links?
6. Is your website popularity (Alexa rank) improving?
7. Is the site quick to load?

Currently, I have a limited time offer of free WebScan reviews - see WSI Webscan.

When you do digital marketing it’s important that you do the right things to make it cost effective and to gain the maximum return on investment.  This article contains some hints and tips to help you get the best from your time and money spent on digital marketing.

Know Your Audience

You should understand your audience: visitors, customer and prospects.  You must know their needs for information and education on the areas in which you provide products and services.  You need to understand the factors which will determine whether they will buy from you, from your compeitors or not at all.

Provide Valuable Content

From your knowledge of your audience you should craft content which is of value to them (not just sales blurb).  Distribute this content over your marketing channels (website, email marketing, mobile marketing and social media).

Make Yourself Easy to Find

Use search engine optimisation, search advertising, display advertising, social media presence, mobile marketing, directories, articles and press releases to make people aware of how your products and services can help them and to draw them to your website.

Make Sure They Convert

Make sure your website is designed to convert visitors into buyers.  Don’t distract visitors from your preferred conversion funnel.

Test & Measure Incrementally

Know what your goals are and how you can measure against them.  Test everything.  Use analytics to monitor performance and tune your marketing.

I’ve written quite a bit about how to make websites work  in two previous posts (http://wsidigitaladvantage.com/2010/11/28/successful-marketing-just-do-three-things and http://wsidigitaladvantage.com/2010/12/14/is-your-website-lonely/).  Now, I’m going to write about some of the reasons that websites don’t work properly for their businesses.

One of the things I do is analyse websites using the Webscan tool (http://wsidigitaladvantage.com/services/webscan/).  This helps me determine how well a website is working for a business and what needs to be done to improve it. 

To work properly, a website needs to attract and retain visitors.  It also needs to support the conversion of those visitors into customers.  If it doesn’t do those things then it’s not working properly.

Here are the top 5 reasons I’ve found for a website not working properly for it’s business.

1. Lack of Analytics – if you don’t know how many visitors you’re getting, where they’re coming from, how they found you and what pages they visit then how can you manage your marketing?
2. Poor or Missing Titles, Headings and Descriptions – these help search engines to index you against your desired keywords and they also help visitors.
3. Content Not Regularly Updated – everybody likes fresh content, especially search engines.  Your content should be compelling enough to attract and retain visitors.
4. Lack of Inward Links – these help visitors to find you and also improve search engine rankings.  Links from social media are particularly good.  Remember to verify and develop your free Google Places listing as this is a great directory link.
5. Website not Optimised for Conversion – your website should encourage your visitors to do what you need them to do (buy, contact, download etc).  The way for them to do this should be clear, easy and free from distractions.

If you sort these problems out then your website is going to have more visitors and convert more of those visitors into customers.