Tag: SEO

  • PPC or SEO? Where should you invest your money?

    SEO vs Adwords Advertising

    If you’re trying to promote a website online then you’ll probably be familiar with two terms that can help you do this. The first being ‘Google Adwords’, or pay per click advertising and the second being ‘SEO’. As these are both acronyms they can be fairly impenetrable to the layman but are fairly easy to understand with a little bit of explanation. Once you know the ins and outs of each you can then decide which is best for your particular needs and where you should be channelling your resources.

    Google Adwords PPC

    ‘PPC’ stands for ‘Pay Per Click’ which refers to a particular type of advertising. As the name suggests, this form of advertising means that the companies only pay when someone clicks on their advert. This is in keeping with a fairly new model of business that can be found in various forms in a selection of industries whereby the client only pays when they get a result with no need to put in an investment up front (‘POD’ or ‘Print On Demand’ is the same in the publishing industry, whereby printing companies only print copies, and therefore only charge commission, when copies of their client’s titles are sold). By ‘bidding’ on how much you’re willing to pay for each click, you can then increase how regularly your advertising shows up on other sites and search engines. The most popular PPC provider is probably still Google who will publish your adverts on their search pages (targeted to come up as ‘sponsored links’ only when people search for relevant keywords) and on the websites of their business partners. There are many other popular options however with Facebook recently becoming quite a major player in targeted PPC advertising.

    Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)

    SEO on the other hand stands for ‘Search Engine Optimization’, which describes the various methods used by webmasters to get their websites to rank highly in the main search results on sites like Google, Yahoo and Bing without paying for the privilege. This is achieved by researching ‘keywords’ or ‘keyphrases’ – which are the terms that visitors search for regularly on sites. By writing the content on the site in such a way that it includes these precise phrases, webmasters can then ensure that Google recognises those articles as being relevant and brings them up when the users search for those terms or similar ones.

    There is more to SEO than this however, and other methods involve changes the names of images and html files, and tailoring the meta tags to help the search engines’ ‘spiders’ to find the pages. Another method is to ensure that lots of links on other sites point towards yours which can help the search engines to find it as well as making it look more important and respectable (the more highly ranked the page that links to yours is the more the link will be ‘worth’). One of the easiest ways to do this is by submitting articles to article directories with links embedded in the text.

    Both of these options have strengths and weaknesses. While PPC has a more immediate effect, it is limited to the amount of money you put into it; whereas SEO has the potential to generate massive amounts of self-perpetuated traffic for a short amount of money with a little bit of luck. One option then is to split the funding across the two methods in order to draw traffic in in the long term and the short term, or to learn to use SEO yourself rather than outsourcing the service for a bigger price (though you will likely get a more efficient service by using a professional service and will yield greater results more quickly). The correct method however will eventually depend on your business and on your personal preferences.

  • A Healthy Dose of SEO

    The last five years have seen unprecedented growth in the web development industry and one can attribute much of the growth to SEO firms who have shown businesses the way forward. Experts in the field have played and will always play an instrumental role in helping websites achieve online success. To understand why good search engine optimisation works wonders for almost all online businesses alike, you have to understand the key components of a good SEO package.

    Website Analysis and Audit

    Usually a part of the starters, a thorough website analysis and audit helps one to reveal the strengths and weaknesses of a website. This can then help one identify the areas that are under performing and need improvement. Basic ease of use and search engine friendliness is also determined as this tells whether a website has been programmed incorrectly or not.

    HTML Code Optimisation

    Following a general website analysis, good SEO would include a clean and valid html code as incorrect codes prevent indexing and crawling of a website. Code cleaning is usually achieved by rewriting completely for static sites while employing CSS for dynamic sites. Even though this does not always improve rankings in the search engines, it is important from the keywords point of view.

    Keyword Analysis and Optimisation

    Choosing the right keywords to optimise for is one of the key aspects of a profitable search engine optimisation campaign. Target the wrong keywords and no matter how much you spend, you will not make a return on your time or money spent. Therefore, it is essential that a deep analysis of the most relevant keywords related to your online business is done. Then your website may be optimised keeping these primary and secondary key phrases in mind.

    Back Links Analysis and Link building campaigns

    Now that you have got a fully optimised website, it is time to enhance your website’s visibility by ensuring that your main keywords rank on the first pages of Google and Yahoo (maybe BING). The number and quality of back links to a website plays a very significant role in better search engine rankings. However, links from bad neighbourhoods such as link farms or ‘spammy’ websites can adversely affect your website. One quality back link is much more useful than hundreds of useless links and therefore, one must ensure that proper and quality link building is done. For example, links from high authority, ranked and aged websites usually signify quality. Such websites include government websites, academic or research related sites etc. Apart from these, link building can also be done by distributing articles, submitting to web directories and social bookmarking.

    These are the most important features of any healthy Search engine optimisation campaign that you want to buy for enhancing your online business. However, also remember that you have to gain authority and trust from your visitors also so over-optimisation must be avoided at all costs. A clean-coded website, with a good balance of keywords and a focus on user-friendliness should be the end result of an SEO package.

  • Recent SEO Results vs Adwords

    Hello. Do I need to be polite and say Happy New Year!… there you go 🙂

    I have been monitoring our and our clients campaigns over the last months and have noticed changes it the trends compared between SEO and Adwords. We manage both for many of our clients websites and so it is always interesting for me to see where their visitors come from and what campaigns are bringing a higher amount of visitors.

    Before I used to be one of those people (was i the only one?) who thought Adwords was only a short term solution until you had good natural rankings. But now I think that was completely ridiculous of me. I mean, I never thought Adwords was a waste of money, this is definitely not and never was true, but I thought, get in the top five organically and turn your Adwords off. Unless you are very aggressive of course. I thought you could just keep using Adwords for the phrases that brought good traffic to your site that you didn’t have a high organic ranking for. (plus I was in an SEO sales team)

    Now though, as I said, this seems completely naive. The main reason for this I think is that the public’s perception of sponsored links has changed. I will explain.

    When it was new, I think people saw it as invasive advertising and did not trust the websites found there so much as they do now. So they would click less and buy less from Adwords sites. Now however it is common place and totally accepted as a relevant and targeted place to buy, or find the information you are looking for. I think that is the main reason anyway, it has heaps more credibility from the users point of view than before.

    One reason I think this happened, aside from just the time, is that Adwords has become more and more busy and people have got better and better at using it. The sites in the sponsored links are either very relevant to what you search for, or are from the super popular, get as many people to your site as possible websites. It is easy to weed out the latter if you are not interested in what they offer, based on the text in their ad. Which brings me back to the point of advertisers being better at using Adwords.

    Because Ads are much more targeted in the sponsored links, the click through rate is also becoming higher. Users are also becoming used to the sponsored links bringing them straight onto the most relevant page of the website depending on what they search for, so it is quicker browsing. Price shopping is made easier this way.

    From the evidence I have, it seems that you need to rank in the top three places organically, if you want to get more traffic than from a well run Adwords campaign these days. At least in the different industries I am exposed to……which is pretty diverse.

    If you budget allows you to run both, do it. Then you have the best of both worlds. Different people are more inclined to click on sponsored ads or organically listed websites than others, so this way you attract both. If you are found in both lists, it also may help to make you look more professional.

    Obviously the more you can target and manage your adwords accounts the better. Get someone to break it down as much as possible for you if you need to keep your cost per click down. And keep up to speed on the latest developments in SEO.

    Anyway…I don’t want to carry on too much. Let me know your opinion or experience on this subject.

  • Internet Marketing For Tradesman

    The amount of internet marketing for tradesmen is always increasing. More and more small and medium businesses are turning away from the traditional yellow pages and local directories or magazines to gain exposure for their business.

    This is true whether they are sole traders or companies with many contractors working for them. However the strategies used by these different sized businesses is often very different, especially on Google.

    One type of website where tradesmen and other service providers can get visitors from is Home Improvement Pages, Home Friday, Service Central or similar directory websites based on the building industry. While these can be low cost options, you should do as much research as possible before committing to monthly subscriptions. Some offer pay per click models which may offer better value for money. With this type of billing you only have to pay when someone clicks on your ad.

    Yellow Pages online is also used with some success for tradesmen. This online version of the fat old books we used to search with, charges a set amount to be listed online. The more you pay the more prominent your Ad will be, but business owners in general that we have dealt with report a very low return from money invested into yellow online. The trade industries do however receive more internet visitors from this source than the average yellow online listing.

    To advertise your business in Yellow online or directory websites, you do not need to have a website of your own. You can write a short Ad with a few pictures and your phone number. However this is only normally beneficial to attract callers restricted to your very local area.

    Now moving on to Google. This is the fastest growing arena for tradesman looking for larger returns from internet marketing. When done well, you do not rely on the popularity of other websites to bring targeted visitors to your website. Nearly everyone who uses the internet in Australia uses Google so that is obviously the best place to be. There are a few different ways to get your website on the first page of Google. Search engine optimisation (SEO), which means the organic or left side of Google, Google maps, or Google Adwords (Pay per click or sponsored links are other terms used).

    The later two options will have your website on the first page of Google very quickly. Google Maps is a free service that allows a very short listing of your website name and phone number next to a map which pin points your business address. So if you are a brickie in St Kilda and someone searches on Google for ‘bricklayer St Kilda’, a map of St Kilda will appear at the top of Googles response page marking your business address and next to the map your business name and phone number. Good free exposure. It usually takes just a few days to come up.

    With Adwords you can target as many different phrases as you wish and manipulate your account so that you will only be found by searchers within a certain geographic location that suits your business. Google can see where people search from and only shows your ad to them if they are from the area you specify. How it works is that you create a small ad with three lines of advertising text. Depending on how much you are willing to pay per click and how relevant your ad looks to Google for the phrases you target it will show your ad in a more or less prominent position. It is free to show your Ad but each time someone clicks on it you pay a price to Google. This cost per click will vary from 5 cents to a few dollars. It is a great short term strategy to bring targetted visitors to your website. However because you are paying per click it is important that your website is designed to encourage people to enquire. We highly recommend getting a professional to create your account for you. Even if you take over the management of it after a few months this should be very beneficial in the long term for you. Someone who knows how to create a good Adwords account will keep you cost per click much lower than if you create it yourself and they will also help get more and better targeted visitors coming to your website.

    To be found on the left side of Google usually takes a few months. In the trade industries the level of competition is such that if you choose a good SEO company then you should be able to secure some very high organic rankings. The benefit of being on the left side of Google is that many more people click there when compared to the right or Adwords. The reason for this is that the public trusts Google and thinks if you are on the left, you are a trusted service provider. This also means a higher percentage of people will enquire from your website when they arrive from the left side of Google. Adwords often attracts more people shopping solely based on price, not quality, so the customer generated from organic rankings is often a better value client. Good SEO companies will also generate visitors from other sources as they carry out their work to bring your website onto the left side of Google. They will list your site in many free directories, post articles related to your business and maybe even press releases and some other internet marketing strategies. Our experience has shown that those who have committed to SEO have reaped the largest benefit.

    The strategy used for small and large companies should also be different on Google. While bigger companies can target wider demographic areas, small companies should usually attack more refined keyphrases specific to their business. To use the brickie in St Kilda example again, if he is a one man band and he is found on Google for ‘bricklayers melbourne’ he may not be able to cope with how often his phone rings with people on the line from the other side of melbourne who he does not want to work for and go mad. Whereas if he refined this to the suburbs where he is happy to work or South Melbourne for example, he will get more qualified leads. Now if the brickie can cover the whole of Melbourne and has lots of contractors working for him (and a secretary) he can then benefit a lot by being found for terms like ‘bricklayer melbourne’. Currently once you have high natural Google rankings for trade related phrases, they remain with little effort. So after an initial investment it will become an ongoing low cost source of quality leads.

    Again your website should be designed in a way that visitors will navigate easily and find it simple to enquire from whenever you are targeting Google users. People these days want quick info and an easy point of contact, so give it to them. Again a good SEO company should help you with this too. Pick one that wants to help bring you quality leads, not just rankings.

    Internet marketing for tradesman will only become more competitive. Those with the foresight to take action now while it is not too cut throat on Google will reap the highest benefit, especially if you want to grow your company. It will only become more expensive and take longer to be found on Google in the future, especially without paying an increasing cost per click.

    I hope this post has been useful for anyone in the trade industry. Feel free to leave any comments or ask any questions about what is written here.