One of your first considerations when deciding to launch a PPC campaign is internet marketing training and education. Each search engine has their own pay per click advertising program and way of doing things. One of the advantages of web site promotion through PPC advertising is that it is generally easy to establish an account. Simply do your keyword research, outline the benefits of doing business with you, create some ads, have your credit card handy and follow the steps. There are some engines though, that will post ads immediately and satisfy your need for instant gratification.

Search Engine Advertising Program Changes

Keeping up-to-date on changes as they occur can also be challenging and another reason for logging into your PPC advertising campaigns daily. The search engines are continually improving their pay per click marketing programs, adding enhancements and making changes. Be sure you subscribe to some of the many newsletters made available by experts in the search engine marketing industry. For those using Google AdWords, they have an official blog that will give you tips and insight into tools available and changes that will help you advertise your site. Another great resource is Google Alerts. Google Alerts is a free service offered by Google that sends you email notifications for topics that you are interested in and is a great way to keep on top of industry changes.

Google AdWords offers some automated bid structuring which helps initially, but soon you will want to manually manage your bids. Learning how to do this will take time –looking through the forums and asking the right questions of the right people will help.

PPC bid management can be “tricky” in programs such as Google AdWords. Although, setting up a campaign is fairly easy managing it can be frustrating if you don’t know what you are doing. Some things are learned by trial and error and only over time will you become a pay per click expert.

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Display Your Address and Contact Information in All the Right Places

Adding your business name, mailing address and phone number on pages you would find related to a local search query increases relevance and shows validity to both search engines and your customers.  You would be surprised at how many small businesses don’t put a physical location on their home, about and contact page, let alone on every page.

Another place to add contact information to is the page’s title tag.

As you find the need to add more content to your site to help drive traffic and bring in customers, start adding your contact information to specialty pages in a targeted fashion, for example speciality/name of company/location.

Extra Credit: Markup your geographic location with Microdata, a collection of HTML tags used to help all the major search engines (Google, Yahoo!, and Bing) to enhance the display of search results in the form of rich snippets.

Get Social. Seriously.

Just like any marketing initiative, the key to success in ensuring maximum return on local search engine marketing programs is consistency and visibility. The more places your business is mentioned and cited, the better. Customers can’t find you if they don’t know you exist.

Stick to mediums that can easily be measured, so ensuring you have the right mechanisms to track social media campaigns is paramount its success. Use free tools like Google Analytics.

If you’re ready to begin utilizing social media in your small business marketing efforts, start by registering your username on each and every social network frequented by your target audience.

Extra Credit: Promote deals, specials, and new product offerings by holding contests on social media. By encouraging retweets, likes, shares and +1’s through incentives, you increase awareness through social media while also positively affecting your social link profile.

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As more and more companies look to tap into the huge traffic monster that is facebook just how can you engage your new fans to make the most of your investment in facebook?

Without a doubt, one of the best ways is to create a quick poll that your fans can then answer. Now I’m not talking about creating another “which cartoon character are you?” poll that serves no purpose other than annoying people after they have been asked to join the app and take part for the hundredth time! Creating a poll is incredibly easy and can be done using any one of a number of “polling” apps.

However, creating a poll doesn’t just stop at creating a community feel and getting some interaction on your page, it is much more powerful than that! Imagine being able to ask all your customers to fill in a quick questionnaire, what would you ask? How could you use the results? What would it mean to your business to be able to know what your clients are thinking right now? Because that is essentially what you are finding out.

With a little careful consideration you can find out if a new product or service is something your clients not only want but need, how much they would be willing to pay for it and if there was an invaluable addition or improvement you could make to your business or current services, probably at little cost to you, that would make you the number one provider of that service.

So just how do you create a poll? Our preference is to use the in-house facebook questions app, you can find a link to the app by using facebook as your fan page, click on the home button and you should see the link to the app in your menu bar under your picture. Once you clicked on it, you can then add a question and any filters you wish. Although this app is open to the whole facebook community by making your question related to your page/products, you can then target your client base within facebook.

Once posted the question will appear in your fans’ newsfeeds and give them the opportunity to answer you.

For more information on how this app works and get started posting questions yourself please visit https://www.facebook.com/help/?page=1145 for the apps faq’s.

Happy polling!

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• Facebook Faux Pas…

Although discounted by many SEO “gurus” I always like to include the keyword meta tag on all sites that I am working on. The reason is that the search engines are constantly changing how their algorithms work and it was not too long ago that the keyword tag was used by search engines like Google to determine what your site was about, so by including this tag I basically safeguard against any changes that may take this tag into consideration again.

Getting your keyword tag right is really simple and incredibly quick to do by following just a few golden rules but it is implemented wrongly on the vast majority of websites.

The first Golden rule is to keep your keyword list small and targeted, aim to have somewhere between 5 and 12 keywords maximum. On countless sites that use this tag the web designer/owner has crammed in anything up to 50 keywords hoping they will appear for any and all of those keywords. But using so many keywords has an adverse effect on your ranking, as rather than thinking that your site is about all the keywords you have listed, the search engines basically take the view that if you are about all of those things you cannot be about any of them in any great detail. So keep the list small and targeted around one main keyword per page.

The next most common mistake is to use a geographical area as a keyword. Whilst it can be a very good idea to market locally as you are cutting down on the amount of competition you are fighting with, by simply adding in a town name you are saying your site is about that town not the services you provide, so for a jeweller instead of having the following keywords:

Engagement rings, jewellery, watches, Leeds, Bradford… etc

You would be far better to add the town to the keyword you are targeting and again keep it targeted to rings if that what the page is about:

Engagement rings Leeds, Diamond rings Leeds, etc.

Now you are telling the search engines your site is about engagement rings in Leeds.

So, in just a few minutes by following these tips you too can safeguard your site from any changes that bring the keyword tag back into commission with the added bonus of knowing exactly what keywords your page should be targeting.

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• Tags
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This can be one of the hardest of the tags to get right. You basically have around 160 characters to write a blurb about your web page explaining what it is that you do whilst convincing the search engine user why they should click on your site and take a look around.

In terms of SEO value we have found this tag to have slightly less value than the title tag but it still gives some value and as such, we need to follow the same rules as the title tag by getting our keyword in nice and early. This should also help the click through rate (CTR) as the searcher can immediately see the page is about whatever they type into the search engine. The remainder of the tag can be devoted to good copy encouraging the searcher click on your listing, but to really get the most SEO value you may want to include a derivative of your main keyword further down in the description, so for example, if I sold fencing panels my description may read:

Wooden fencing panels at the best prices in Leeds! For all your fencing needs click this listing now you won’t believe the amazing prices of all our wood panels

As you can see I have included the main keyword of “wooden fencing panels” with further variations of “fencing” and “wood panels” in the body of the description whilst giving the searcher a compelling reason to click on this listing – I’ve basically told them if they want panels, we have them at the best prices possible in Leeds.

Other variations may describe an offer on the site for anybody who buys panels direct through the site or some other reason as to why a searcher should want to visit. There really is no right or wrong just as long as you give a good reason as to why the searcher should click on your listing.

One thing that is important to try is to change the description tag every now and again and by using some website analytics software, you can test to see what description works best at obtaining you the clicks. This is relatively easy to do as you will be able to see how much traffic your site is getting from the analytics before and after the change. Please do make sure though that the description is the only thing you have changed otherwise you will not be able to tell whether the new description tag is what is having the effect on your CTR’s. Also be sure to keep any traffic not through organic search engine listings at a constant level (or at least make sure it is measurable) so you can discount it from the results.

By testing and tracking, not only will this tag give you a good SEO boost but also you can make sure your listings are as effective as possible.

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The first tag and the one we will be looking at today is one of the meta tags. The title tag not only gives good SEO value but is also used by the search engines and displayed as the title of your site when it appears in the search results or as the tab title when people are using tabbed browsing to look at your site. This creates a small dilemma when creating your tag as you not only need it to be optimised but also need it to “read” correctly, as it will be displayed to your web site visitors.

Although you can make the title tag as long as you want to, as a rule the search engines will only display approximately 64 characters when displaying your site, plus in tabbed browsing the tag can be truncated to around 15 characters dependant on how many tabs the viewer has open.

In order to get the most SEO value from the tag you will want your main keyword for that particular page to be mentioned and in our experience the earlier they have the keyword the more weight it will have when the search engines look at your site. So, a great tip is rather than putting your company/business name right at the beginning of the tag you really want to have the keyword first and the name second. An example of this for a photographer on their wedding photography page would be:

Wedding Photography|Precious Moments Ltd|Making YOUR day special!

As you can see, I have the main keyword first followed by the company name. I have then added a core value for the company so when the site is shown in the search engines it makes it more viewer friendly and more appealing for someone looking for the right photographer for their day. This tag is actually 65 characters long but if it is truncated to 64, I will only loose the exclamation mark.

As each page on your website will have a different purpose or describe a separate service that you offer, you need to create a title tag for each page containing the best keyword for that page.

Once you have created your tag simply ask your web designer to paste it in place on the particular page or if you are comfortable with editing the tags/web page yourself you can paste your new tag in.

That is all for today, be sure to check back over the coming couple of weeks as I go through each important tag in turn.

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I thought today that I would start a series of posts explaining one of the most important factors of on-page SEO – Tags.

With up to (approximately) 30% of a site’s SEO comprising of onsite factors, the tags you use on your site can have a massive effect on where and how your site appears in the search engines, especially when combined with other onsite factors.

Essentially, there are a few different types of tags that exist on a web page but they are all key markers for content that the search engines will pick up on, they basically say this is what this site is about.

The first set of tags we will be looking at are called the meta tags and can be seen in the image below.

These tags are a mixed bunch when it comes to how valuable they are in SEO terms but as a group can have a huge effect on SEO and click through rates when someone sees your site in the search engine results. Personally, here at Optimised we always like to include the title tag (for good SEO value and improved CTR’s), the description tag (although not as strong as the title tag still some SEO value but it is vital for CTR’s) and the keyword tag (once very important for SEO; the search engines don’t take this tag into consideration at the moment but we like to include it in case the algorithms the search engines use change and it becomes an important factor again!).

Then I will take a look at the header tags. These tags are placed around the headlines in the copy on your page and the search engines will scan them to gain an idea of what your content is about. You can have a number of different headers, all identified by the <H1> through to <H6> tags in the html code of your site, all of which have a different SEO weight.

Finally, we will be looking at a tag often missed or at least not optimised by many businesses, the Alt tag. This tag can be used for any visual content on your page and lets the search engines know what an image is all about.

So stay tuned as I break these down and explain how to get the best from your tags which will really help your onsite optimisation and search engine rankings.

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For many businesses PPC is the starting block into the world of online marketing but many decide against looking into SEO for their sites, this decision seems to based on the fact that SEO can seem a daunting world with many do’s, don’ts, myths and legends.

But the truth is, SEO is well worth the investment, whether you decide to do your own and invest your time or whether you employ a SEO specialist and invest your money, a correctly run SEO campaign will give you a good solid ROI.

Since the dawn of search engines, marketers and advertisement corporations have conducted a huge amount of research into where the optimal position would be for a website in order to get the most benefit from the search engine traffic. Using technology such as eye tracking software to measure where a search engine browser directs their attention or software which tracks which sites the browser visits and what their behaviour is once on the site, these studies have revealed some remarkable trends when it comes to how browsers use the top search engines like Google.

One of these reports conducted by Enquiro, a large USA corporation, used eye tracking software to measure just how being listed in the sponsored (paid advertising) slots compared to the natural or organic search engine listings. The results were conclusive and showed that at best, even when you occupy the number 1 position for your ad you can still only expect the same number of clicks as the organic results in position 7 or lower (dependant on your industry).

This is partly due to how people respond to advertising in the first place, as a rule we are all programmed to ignore it! However, another huge reason is the fact that as the search engine user becomes more discernable about receiving the best results in a super fast time, if you can rank your website within the top 3 position on Google, Yahoo or Bing you are given instant credibility. I mean you must be legitimate and a leader in your chosen field if the search engines favour your site over your competitors right?

So would you rather pay to be at position number 7 with no chance of improving your ranking… or is that just not good enough for you? Because SEO could be the answer…

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A common mistake by many SMEs is to assume that by including SEO in their marketing plan, that’s SEO covered. The reality is that like any other form of marketing, in order to gain the best possible results from your SEO campaign you need to plan what and how you are going to do it.

A complete SEO strategy can be as complicated or as simple as you want to make it but essentially it can be split into certain key areas.

Onsite optimisation:

1) How are you going to make sure that the site itself is as optimised as possible for your chosen keywords? A couple of suggestions would be to run a website health check, which you can do easily and for free using tools such as websitegrader.com.

2) Once you have improved what you currently have, how can you make it even better? Maybe you would like to start a blog or you could link your site to any social accounts you may have such as twitter and facebook?

3) What checks will you put into place to ensure, as the search engines change their algorithms your site does not get caught out?

Offsite optimisation:

1) How are you going to structure your link building strategy?

2) What social media accounts can you create and maintain to pass the “social vote” to your site?

3) What about submitting content to article directories, video sites etc?

These are just a few thoughts but are absolutely vital in composing your SEO strategy. If you would like a FREE CONSULTATION to check out how healthy your SEO campaign is and how it could be improved, please don’t hesitate request a call back from us now by clicking on the link above or visiting our contact us page.

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Often, for many B2B (business 2 business) SMEs blogging takes a backward step, what was once a good idea and often a necessity for their online marketing campaign becomes a drag. Very quickly the company blog is nothing more than an advertisement to their lack of commitment and ability to follow through with what is a simple task.

But it doesn’t have to be that way and by following just a couple of golden rules you can make sure your company’s blog is doing exactly what it is meant to… bringing in more business for you!

1) Plan your blog! As simple as it sounds this is fundamental to a successful blog and you should plan everything. What is the aim of the blog? Which topics will the blog cover? How will you position yourself with the blog?

2) Put together a blogging team. Using your plan identify who would be a good person within your business to contribute content to the blog and ask them if they would be willing to write posts on a regular basis. Even if you can only find one other person you have just halved the work you will need to do!

3) Define your schedule! How frequently and at what time of day will you/the blogging team post to the blog? Plan it out using a scheduler so everybody knows when they will be expected to produce the goods.

4) Create a constant supply of content. By planning what you post about you can then take the necessary steps to ensure you always have content to post that your readers will find valuable. Find other leaders in your niche and keep an eye on what they are posting NB: don’t ever copy them, simply use their posts for inspiration. Create alerts to let you know of important news that will have an effect on your trade. Keep an ideas folder with ideas for posts that can then be expanded on in the future.

5) Keep it light! If you don’t enjoy blogging you will struggle to keep it going!

Without a doubt if you can commit to it and are able to position yourself correctly blogging is one of the best online strategies for any business even B2B specialists!

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