The Importance of Being Relevant

Oct 20 | 2015
online marketing

The main purpose of pay per click advertising is to drive high quality traffic from your target market to your website for the lowest cost possible. To do this depends on the relevance of your adverts, your keywords, and your landing pages, both to each other and to your target market. 

Once your keywords, ad groups and landing pages are completely synergised, you will be rewarded with a higher position in Google's SERPs (Search Engine Result Pages), and you will pay less every time someone clicks your ad.  You may also see a metric called “Quality Score” increasing.

Quality score is one of the most important metrics in a Google advertising campaign. Quality score is scored out of 10 (1 being the most expensive and 10 being the cheapest). If and where your ad will be shown on the SERPs is all down to your quality score.  After a recent update, the default quality score for newly added keywords is 6; however this is subject to change very quickly. Quality score is  calculated by an algorithm based on the following factors; 

The relevance of your ad copy - When you are organising your account, it is important to ensure that your keywords are in a tight-knit ad group; this enables you to create ad copy that is relevant to all of the keywords in your ad group. This means that when a potential customer enters a relevant search query into the Google search box, your ad will be relevant to their search. Which leads us nicely onto the next point... 

Click-through rate (CTR) - Even though no one knows just how much weighting CTR has on Google's quality score, it is pretty obvious that Google count this as one of the most important factors, if not the most important. 

If your advert is relevant to the searcher's query, they will click on your ad and enter your site in the hope that they can find a solution to their problem through your company. The more people who click on your advert, the more likely Google are to realise that your website is relevant for this particular search and increase your overall quality score accordingly. To increase your click-through rate, make sure that your ad copy is relevant. 

Landing page - You have now created the tight-knit ad group and created a relevant advert that reflects your keywords. Now you need to think about where on your site you are going to send your traffic. Obviously, you need to send people to a page that is relevant to your keywords, and to your ad copy.

For example, let's say you are creating a campaign for a web design agency that specialises in ecommerce websites, but also provides customers with various digital marketing solutions. The company owner has asked you to create a campaign that focuses on their responsive ecommerce website design service. You will need to point your adverts to your ecommerce landing pages, not your digital marketing pages, as this will decrease the relevance of your adverts, meaning that they will not be shown as much, if at all. Furthermore, if your ads are pointed at irrelevant landing pages, every click you receive will be really expensive, and most importantly, potential customers will click onto the website, see that they are on the wrong page, and leave, increasing your bounce rate.

Unfortunately, people do not often have time to look through your website to find the exact page or product that they require. The less clicks it takes for them to find what they need, the more engaged they will be, increasing the likelihood of the customer completing your goal (e.g. signing up to your newsletter, downloading your e-book, purchasing a product, booking an appointment, or making enquiry about your company). When your tracked goal has been completed, this will be recorded in AdWords as a conversion. An increased click-through rate at a lower cost means that your cost per conversion is decreased, and your return on investment is increased! 

Would you like our professional digital marketing team to manage your paid search campaigns for you? Click here to request a quote, or give us a call on 01146 339050.

The Benefits of PPC Advertising

Jul 29 | 2015
online marketing
We've already explained to you what PPC advertising is; now it's time to look at why you might want to do it. There are many benefits to pay-per-click advertising - here are a few of the big ones:
  • You can set your own budget depending on your advertising goals. If you own an ecommerce website, you will probably want to be a bit more aggressive with your ads; therefore, a larger daily budget would be more beneficial, as you will achieve more clicks and more potential sales. However, this does depend on your market; for example, if you are operating in a very niche market, you might not need a very big budget, whereas if you stock a more widely available product, the keywords will cost more as there will be a higher number of other companies aiming to attract the attention of potential customers.

  • If done correctly, PPC advertising will get you to the top of Google's results pages. Whenever we ask clients about their SEO goals, 95% of them say, "We want to be at the top of Google." Well, by using PPC, you can reach the 'top of Google' instantly - that is, if your AdWords account manager has done a good job and created a top-quality advert for your product. This means that you will get noticed, get clicks, and get sales. Even if you are already at the top of Google's organic results, PPC can still be used to support your current rankings. With your products at the top of the organic results, the PPC results AND Google's Shopping feed, customers would find it difficult NOT to click through to your site!

  • You can target specific demographics. Are you planning on expanding your business to another area of the country, or even to a different country altogether? Would you like to expand and test to see if there is a demand for your product/service elsewhere? Or perhaps you just have a bricks-and-mortar shop, and you only want to advertise to people in the immediate surrounding area? Whatever your target area is, search engine adverts can help you to reach it with ease.

  • You can track everything. Between AdWords and Analytics, you can see where your customers are coming from, what they are searching for, and the paths that they take through your website to come to a purchasing decision. For this, you can see if you are pointing your customers to the correct landing page, as well as if they are converting then and there or if they are just adding things to the basket and comparing prices with your competitors. You can also test the success of the keywords you're using - are people coming through to your site via a broad keyword search, then failing to convert? If so, why aren't they converting? Are they converting, but taking a long time to do so? What are they looking at on your website? AdWords and Analytics can answer all of these questions and more, providing a wealth of valuable information for you to analyse.

  • You can test quickly. Do you remember the good old days of direct marketing, when you'd step through your door to find piles of marketing communications lying on your doormat? Or the days of Web 1.0, when online advertising platforms were nowhere near as intricate as they are now, and you had to sort through hundreds of pages of data? Back then, the campaign results took ages to interpret, and you wouldn't know whether or not a campaign had succeeded until several months later. Nowadays, Google AdWords allows you to see data almost instantly, and meaningful data interpretation can be achieved in weeks instead of months. You can test all kinds of strategies and factors in a very short period of time.

  • You can compete with global companies. Whether you're a one-man band selling products out of your garage, a modest SME, or a multi-national company, you'll be in direct competition with everyone else when it comes to PPC advertising (something that was unheard of until quite recently). Don't let this put you off, though - sure, the big companies may have a slightly larger budget than you, but if you're clever with your advertising, you could well receive a better response than a large company that's been around for years.
If you would like to try PPC advertising for your company, we strongly recommend hiring an experienced PPC expert to handle your account for you. Click here to request a PPC management quote from Designer Websites, or give us a call on 01446 339050 to discuss your requirements and, if necessary, set up a meeting with our AdWords specialists.

Designing a Good Email Campaign

Jul 24 | 2015
online marketing
Designing a Good Email Campaign
 
We handle email marketing for quite a few clients here at Designer Websites - this involves designing each individual campaign and, once the client has signed off on our design, converting and sending the mailer to that client's customer base.
 
Having done this every week for several years, we now have a pretty good idea of what works and what doesn't when it comes to email marketing campaigns. Here are some top tips from our professional web design team:
  • Keep your prime content above the fold. People get a lot of emails nowadays, and if your customers have to scroll down to find out why you're emailing them...well, they won't. They'll delete your message and move on to the next one. That doesn't mean you can't put anything under the fold, but you should definitely put the 'meat' of your mailer right at the top if possible.

  • Brand strongly and consistently. You want to make sure that the recipients of your email know who it's coming from. You also want to make sure that, if they click through to your site, the transition from email to web page is as smooth as possible. Consistent branding is essential for both of these goals - make sure your company name and logo are exactly the same in your mailers as on your website, and make sure that they're prominently displayed in both places too.

  • Use your best images. If you're promoting products in your mailer, make sure you've got decent photos of them. Images are what make people click, and the better your images are, the better your CTR (click-through rate) will be.

  • Don't go overboard. There's always the temptation to cram as many different products and offers into a mailer as possible, but with this sort of thing, less is almost always more. A single clearly-stated, well-presented promotion will elicit a better response from your customers than a confusing, overcrowded jumble.

  • Check your landing pages. What page(s) are you linking to from your mailer? Is the content of your email campaign an accurate reflection of the corresponding content on your website? If not, you'll probably see a lot of people clicking through to your site and then leaving right away because they couldn't find what the email promised them.

  • Put some thought into your subject line. The subject line is the single most important element of any email marketing campaign - after all, if nobody's interested in your subject line, they won't even bother to open your email and see what you've sent them. Do your best to write something that will grab the attention of your customers without looking too much like spam. Oh, and be sure to triple-check your spelling - nothing will kill the recipient's trust more quickly than a typo in the subject line!
Would you like our professional web design team to handle your email campaigns for you? Click here to request a quote, or give us a call on 01446 339050!

What is PPC?

Jun 01 | 2015
online marketing
What is PPC?

PPC simply stands for Pay Per Click, a form of internet marketing that you only pay for when one of your ads is clicked. It's a great way of attracting potential customers or service users to your website instead of waiting to be found amongst the millions of organic search engine results.

There are many different types of PPC around these days. It is most commonly seen on large search engines such as Google, Bing, and Yahoo; however, it has more recently spread to social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter. While social media PPC takes a different format, the fundamentals are the same: you only pay for the ad when somebody clicks on it.

For the purpose of this blog post, we're going to look at the basics of search engine PPC. Search engine pay-per-click advertising essentially allows you to bid for your ads to appear at the top of Google's results page so that, when someone types in a search query that is relevant to your service or products, your ads will be triggered.

For example, if you need to buy a sash for your friend's hen night, you might head to google.co.uk and enter the phrase hen night sash.

After entering the search query, you will be taken to the search results page, and this is where you will find adverts and organic listings for companies who are trying to solve your problem. As you can see from above, the first three listings (framed in red) are adverts, with Google Shopping results on the top right and more adverts underneath them.

Note: The results framed in green are Google's organic listings - this is where our SEO team will help you to appear!

At this point, you spot an advert from a company (Henstuff) selling Hen Night Sashes from £0.75. When you click on this advert, you will be taken to that company's website, and they will have to pay a small charge to Google.

A lot goes into building a successful AdWords campaign. First, you must research the keywords that are most relevant to your business; then, you must select the right keywords for your campaign (ideally, you want to target cheap keywords that will attract lots of customers to the right stage of the buying process). After that, you must organise these keywords into relevant ad groups and create landing pages on your website that are properly optimised to drive conversions. If done properly, all of this work won't go unrewarded - a carefully-targeted campaign will see you pay less every time your adverts are clicked, meaning higher profits for your company.

Would you like to try pay-per-click advertising for your company? Here at Designer Websites, we have a team of PPC experts who will help you to get the best possible results from Google AdWords and other platforms. Get in touch today!

Google’s Plus 1 Button Makes Social Sharing Simple

Jul 08 | 2011
online marketing, website design

Google once again shocked the internet world by releasing its +1 button which features as a part of its paid and organic search results. Following in the footsteps of the Facebook Like button, Google’s +1 button is incorporates user sentiment into the search results, but many question the thinking and intent behind this addition to the search results.

How does the Google +1 Button Work?
The thinking is that people respect the opinion of friends and colleagues over and above strangers or marketers – hence word of mouth has worked well for decades. Now Google want to cash in on this trend by allowing your friends and contacts to recommend websites and content in the search results by adding a +1 to that site.  So, if you are signed into a Google account you will be able to see all the sites your contacts have +1’d and likewise they will be able to see those sites you +1.

Where does the button feature?
The Google +1 button features on both organic and paid search results. Google have also produced a +1 button that can be placed within your website’s pages which allows visitors to recommend your site without having to leave it. At Designer Websites we have already begun implementing this button into a number of website designs making it much easier for our client’s customers to share products, news and special offers.

How will this effect SEO?
The best indication we have so far as to how this new button effects search results comes from the following statement from Google, “We’ll also start to look at +1’s as one of the many signals we use to determine a page’s relevance and ranking, including social signals from other services. For +1's, as with any new ranking signal, we'll be starting carefully and learning how those signals affect search quality over time.” Those sceptical about this new development cite the opportunity for the button to be manipulated through false Google accounts to distort rankings. No doubt Google have thought hard on this and will be monitoring such behaviour closely.

For additional information and details on Google’s +1 button visit Google’s Webmaster Blog.

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