Ever wondered where to start with getting selling on Google?  A good place is to identify if your target market searches for you online.  The only way to do that is to find keywords that they might use, and then find out if there is enough searches per month to make the keyword worth going after.  Before we start, I just need to advise you that a keyword may sometimes actually represent a keyword search phrase so may sometimes actually be 2 or more words long!  I use the terms interchangeably but I mean the same thing.

The following tips are aimed at beginners and are a way to get started with Search Engine Optimisation.

• Open the Google Keyword Tool
• Research your keywords by starting off with something that describes you – such as “accountant Bristol”, “florist Clifton” etc.  Districts are easier than towns but will have a lot less traffic.  Enter the keyword in the box that is marked word or phrase, you don’t need to fill in any other fields at this stage, and click Search
• Look through the list and select 3 to 10 which are closely related.  If you wish you can download the list into Excel to work on by clicking Download then All.  You WILL need the reverse of the keyword phrase as well as plurals and singular.  This means “Bristol accountant” and “accountant Bristol” are NOT the same, as “Bristol accountant” and “Bristol accountants” are not the same either!

An example of a good, closely related keyword list is:

1. Accountant Bristol
2. Accountants Bristol
3. Accountants in Bristol
4. Bristol accountants
5. Chartered accountants Bristol
6. Bristol accountant

• Top tip – to start just plan to use your homepage as it’s easier and faster to get ranked, for the purposes of this blog we will presume you use only your homepage.  Later on you may wish to use other pages for other keyword phrases too

1. Look at the LOCAL monthly searches
2. Ignore the competition field as this is used to find AdWords competition
3. Search volumes of up to 500 are easier and faster to get on the front page for
4. Higher search volumes than 3,000 are competitive and mean it will take longer

Now you have your keyword list, you’re ready to move onto the next stage, competing the SEO Setup.  More on this will follow next week in this SEO tutorial series!

If you have any questions or if you’re struggling, please do comment below.  If you’d like to receive a quote for our SEO Services starting from £30 per month – please give us a call on 0800 3277327 or email us at sales@marketingbyweb.co.uk

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Did you know that all registered charities can apply for Google Grants and receive FREE AdWords credits?

We want to work with more charities to help them make use of Google Grants, so we’d like to offer the following help:

• Consult with you on what you could use AdWords for
• Advise on what goals you need to be tracking (we need at least one web goal to track – this could be donations, finding fundraise
  

  Help with Google Grants

  rs, newsletter subscriptions etc)

• Advise on setting up suitable pages to send traffic to
• Set up a full AdWords Account to help you achieve your goals based on suitable keywords from our research
• Apply to Google for you to help you get accepted for a Google Grant of up to $10,000 per month (please note that this process takes Google up to 5 months unfortunately!)

We will do ALL of this absolutely FREE of charge.  When, and only when, you get accepted by Google we’ll then charge you a setup fee and take over management of your account to ensure you meet your advertising goals.  This set up fee will be £600 (which includes managing it for the first month once it’s live) and each month from then on, we’ll then charge you £300 which will include us advising on your web strategy and having scheduled calls with your Account Manager to help you achieve your advertising goals.

To register your interest or get started – please call 0800 3277327 or email us at sales@marketingbyweb.co.uk today!

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I’m often asked how to find invoices in AdWords.  The good news is there are printable invoices, you just need to be able to access them.

In order to do this log into AdWords and click onto the green tab marked Billing and then click Billing Summary.

Scroll down until you find the right month.  Note you can ONLY print out an invoice for the current month when it ends.  Now click the Invoice button:

The invoice will now turn into a printable screen – simply go to File – Print.

To access previous months, change the date selector and then click Go.

You should now be able to see the month you have selected – again simply click the Invoice link and you will be able to print out your invoice.

Questions?  Do ask them here!

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Search engines are constantly “crawling” the web through the millions of links that can be found within it. These crawlers are generally referred to as “spiders”.  Once the spiders have gone through a link and visited a page (web page, music, image etc) it will add it to the search engine’s massive database. This is known as indexing, and is the first step towards appear in the Search Engine Result’s Pages (SERPs). It is imperative to be added to this database because that is how you will end up appearing on the search engine’s results.  This could be as simple as sending out a tweet containing your website URL, as Google will follow the Tweet and examine the website.

Once you have grasped this concept, it becomes clear that in order to rank highly on the search engines, you will want your website and its various pages crawled by the spiders. In addition, the more links going to and from your website, the higher you will rank in the search engine.

However, it is actually a lot more complicated than just allowing the spiders to visit your website, and building links. Google and other search engines use a highly complex algorithm to calculate the relevancy and value of a website.  SEO companies try and understand this confusing algorithm in order to signal to the search engines the relevancy of a certain website matched to a search term. One of the things calculated by search engine algorithm would be the strength of the various links that go to the website. The strength of the link might be judged based on the volume of traffic that visits it (Alexa Rank) or the Page Rank of the page. Basically, if you gain a link your website from a link that is not very highly ranked, then the link would be nowhere near as powerful as if it was linked to a more popular, higher ranked website.

Search engines are constantly changing and adapting their algorithms in order to create more relevant and useful information to its users. That basically means; if you wish to ensure you are appearing on the front page for your website, you will need to change and adapt with it. – no excuses folks!

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It’s that time again – our latest special offer for new customers!  As we’re delighted to announce the launch of our new PPC Packages, ranging from £99+VAT to £275+VAT per month, we are offering the following to just 10 lucky businesses:

• Initial keyword research
• Setup of between 5 and 30 keywords into Ad Groups
• Conversion code setup to track leads via your website
• Bid price advice
• A Free £75 AdWords voucher (suitable for new advertisers)

TOTALLY FREE!

The only charge you will have to pay is a £10 activation fee, which is payable direct to Google to activate your voucher (credit card details will be requested for this purpose).  If you wish to keep your account running after 7 days, we will then place you onto one of our PPC Packages with prices from just £99+VAT per month.

We are expecting this offer to be extremely popular – so drop us a line today at sales@marketingbyweb.co.uk or call us on 0800 3277327 to get started today!

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Once you have created and setup the many necessary ad groups that make up your adwords account, you may be tempted to think you are now finished- you couldn’t be more wrong! Adwords accounts take consistent optimising and improvements in order to maximise the return on investment that you will receive.

The amount of work that your adwords account will require differs based on a number of things. Clearly, the larger the account, the more work that will be required to constantly update and ensure your ad groups are not being matched against irrelevant keywords, and that the account is converting effectively. Another way to judge the amount of work that your adwords account will require is to look at the number of broad and modified broad keywords in your ad groups. If you have a high number of broad keywords in your account, then those keywords are highly likely to be matched against many things that are irrelevant to what you are offering. This will mean you will need to constantly check to see what your ad groups are being matched against. If you discover a keyword that is not appropriate to what you are offering, then you will need to add it in as a negative to your adwords account.

In order to check all of the keywords that your adwords account is being matched against, you will need to examine your search query reports regularly and ideally schedule them to arrive weekly via email.  This will allow you to  find new ad groups or keywords to use in your adwords account.

For example, you are a company that sells large quantities of office equipment. The broad keyword: “printing paper” is matched against “wholesale printing paper”. You may wish to then create a separate ad group containing the exact and phrase match keywords of “wholesale printing paper”. This will then mean you can write a more relevant ad for this ad group, containing the exact words within the ad. A more relevant ad means a higher chance of it being clicked, which means a higher quality score resulting in lower costs for that keyword. Furthermore, using the search term report to find additional ad groups like this will allow you to discover different thought processes of your potential customers. This will allow your adwords account to reach a larger number of people and increase your return on investment.

To conclude, updating your adwords account using the search term report is highly important. If you do not have enough time to do this on a regular basis, then you are better off using fewer broad keywords when you first set up your adwords campaign. The reason for this is that broad keywords are going to result in more impressions, which means you have a higher chance of being matched against irrelevant search terms.   Of course, if you don’t have time to manage your AdWords account on a continual basis, you’d be better of using a PPC Management company such as ourselves J

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A great infographic showing the areas in which Google makes the most money. Not surprising to see insurance related keyphrases as the biggest revenue generator!

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There seems to be some confusion over who will see a post you put on Google+, whether it’s only seen by people who have added you, people you have added, or people you don’t even know.

This handy graphic (please let us know if it is yours so we can credit it!) explains a lot easier than we could, so we’re sharing it with you today!

(Click on the image to see the larger version).

Hope this makes more sense and allows you to see who will be seeing your Google Plus posts.

PS, you can connect with Claire on Google+ now too!

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