Google’s AdWords system continues to be a popular vehicle for small businesses to advertise their offering using targeted keywords.  On the off-chance that you are unfamiliar with AdWords, here it is in a nut-shell:  You “bid” a certain price for certain search phrases and based on that price, your advertisement shows up in the paid search area on Google when users type in that search phrase  The paid search area is usually along the top area of the page and a list of ads along the right.  For many businesses, picking the right search phrases to target can drive well qualified traffic to their website.

AdWords uses an auctioning process to figure out which ads show up for certain key phrases.  Based on the level of competition for that phrase, and your bid amount, Google determines at what position your ad should show up.  There are other factors that go into the algorithm as well, such as how “successful” your ad has been at getting users to “click through”.  This should not be surprising as Google has an incentive to reward ads that have a higher click-through as these are the ads that make them more money.

There’s a certain psychology that goes into the bidding process when using AdWords.  I’ve seen many people think along these lines (and have done it myself in the past):

Step 1:  Find an attractive search phrase that is targeted for my business and that will generate great potential leads.

Step 2:  Determine the price that I will need to pay to get into the top spot on Google for that search phrase.

Step 3:  Place a bid that will likely increase the chances of getting into the top slot (or pretty close).

The rationale here is simple:  If the search phrase is highly relevant, and you’re willing to pay a price that is far below the “value” that you’re going to get, might as well bid high to get the top spot to drive as much traffic as possible.  The theory is that the #1 spot in the paid listing area will drive much more traffic than the other ones.  Though it is easy to believe this (because this is definitely the case in the natural search area, it is not necessarily the case for the paid search area.

Jason Miller wrote an article recently titled “Bidding On Top Ad Spot A Waste Of Money?” in which he cites a recent study involving measuring click-through rates for paid search.  This study concludes that “While there is some advantage to the number one and number three slots, all positions in the listings show roughly the same click-through rates.”

If you’re spending any money on AdWords, this should be of significant interest to you.  If the click-through rates are about the same, you can get away with bidding less than the amount necessary to get to the top spot.  If this weren’t reason enough to bid lower than what is required to get the #1 spot, there’s an even better possible reason.

There is a chance that the actual quality of users that click through for the lower ranked ads might be higher than those that click on the ad that is in the top spot.  Why might this be?  Well, think about it this way.  The user that clicks on the #2 or #3 spot on the paid search area will likely be a bit more determined to find what they are looking for.  There is a possibility that these users are more qualified and more likely actually looking for what you have to offer.  Granted, this particular argument doesn’t have any evidence to back it up, but that doesn’t mean it’s not possible.

In short, I’d suggesting thinking about how much you are bidding for your paid search campaigns and see if you can get away with lowering your bid (and dropping a couple of spots) and see if that has any measurable impact on your traffic.  If you have already tried this, or have an opinion on the matter, please leave a comment.  Would love to hear your thoughts.

Hubspot :  Call IEG Now on 353 61 218300

24 SEO Terms You Must Know!

0-9

301 Redirect – A way to make one web page redirect the visitor to another page.

Whenever you change the web address of a page, apply a 301 redirect.  to make the old address point to the new one. This ensures that people who have the page saved under the old address will automatically get to the new one.

A

ALT text/tag or attribute - A description of an image in your site's HTML.

Unlike humans, search engines read only the ALT text of images, not the images themselves. Add ALT text to images whenever possible.

B

Blog - A part of your website where you should regularly publish content (e.g. commentary on industry/company topics, descriptions of events, photos, video etc.).

Each blog post on your website is a new page that a search engine sees, and therefore a new opportunity to get found online.

Bookmark - A link to a website saved for later reference in your web browser or computer.

Social bookmarking sites such as delcot users share websites they like with each other. Having links to your site in del.icio.us is a sign that your website content is interesting to people.

C

Conversion Form - A form in which you collect information on your site visitor.

convert traffic into leads. Collecting contact information helps you follow up with these leads.

CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) - The part of your code that defines how different elements of your site look (examples: headers, links).

D

Directory - Just like directories for people and phone numbers.

Submitting your site to a directory gives you more than just an inbound link - it helps people find you. The most popular web directories are  Yahoo

Domain - The main web address of your site (example: www.yoursite.com).

It's good to renew ownership of your domain for several years. Search engine rankings favor websites with longer registrations, because it shows commitment.

H

HTML - The code part of your website that search engines read.

Keep your HTML as clean as possible so that search engines read your site easily and often. Put as much layout-related code as possible in your CSS instead of your HTML.

I

Inbound Link - A link from one site into another.

A link from another site will improve your SEO, especially if that site has a high PageRank.

Indexed Pages - The pages of your website that are stored by search engines.

K

Keyword - A word that a user enters in search.

Each web page should be optimised with the goal of drawing in visitors who have searched specific keywords.

L

Long tail keyword - An uncommon or rarely used keyword.

Small businesses should consider targeting your keywords Common keywords such as 'software' are more competitive, making it harder to rank high for them in a search.

M

Metadata - Data that tells search engines what your website is about.

N

Nofollow - When a link from one site to another does not pass SEO credit.

Do not use nofollow when linking to internal pages in your website. Use it when linking to external pages that you don't want to endorse.

P

Page title - The name you give your page, which is seen at the top your browser window.

Page titles should contain keywords related to your business. Words at the beginning of your page title are more highly weighted than words at the end.

PageRank - A number from 0-10, assigned by Google, indicating how good your overall SEO is. It is technically known as 'Toolbar PageRank.'

PPC Advertising scheme in which an advertiser puts an ad in an advertising venue, and pays that venue each time a visitor clicks on his/her ad. Google AdWords is the classic example of this.

R

RSS Feed - RSS stands for 'really simple syndication.' It is a subscription-based way to get updates on new content from a web source.

Set up an RSS feed on your website or blog to help your followers stay updated when you release new content.

S

Social Media – Online media created by and shared among individuals. Facebook, YouTube and Twitter are popular social media websites.

Links from many . It's important to have links to your site spread through social media.

Spider – A computer program that browses the internet and collects information about websites.

T

Traffic - The visitors to your site.

Traffic Rank - The ranking of how much traffic your site gets compared to all other sites on the internet. You can check your traffic rank on Alexa.

U

URL - The web address of a page on your site (example: www.yoursite.com/contact)

1) Gain Visibility as a Thought Leader
Each thoughtful post on your blog is a public demonstration of your thought leadership, personal integrity, humor, and professional insights. You don’t have to refute one of Einstein’s theories to get respect. For example, a summary of recent trends in your industry, or a reaction to a recent news article can be extremely effective blog posts.

2) Engage Customers in a Dialogue
If you blog using a solid blogging engine, readers will have the option to comment on each article. Folks who comment on your blog may be sales leads, or they may just challenge or support your views. Either way, comments beget comments, and you will soon be at the center of an industry-relevant dialogue with customers and partners.

3) Every Blog Article is an SEO Opportunity
The much-discussed “long tail” of search refers to highly specialized, low-traffic search terms that represent a significant amount of total searches. Translation: lots and lots of people are searching online for lots and lots of random things. You can’t realistically optimize your site for every long tail search term, but you can certainly write blog posts targeting niche keyword phrases that are likely to draw highly qualified prospects. For example, blog a reaction to a speaker in your vertical at a local tech conference. You may not draw much natural search traffic, but there is a good chance your blog will rank well very soon for searches like “vertical + conference + speaker + city”, and those visitors may be highly interested in your reaction to the speech.

4) Blogs Are Link Bait
Very few websites or bloggers will link to the “products and services” page on a corporate website. People don’t link to corporate advertisements. On the other hand, a good blog article is an industry-specific insight or a thoughtful critique. Blog articles garner links because they are interesting, informative, and not overly corporate or sales-focused. The benefit to you is that more links means better search engine rankings and more site traffic, which translates into more sales leads.

5) Humanize Your Brand
Blogs offer an opportunity for a company to present its insightful, helpful, thoughtful side. Through a blog, prospects will get a sense of your company’s people, culture, and vision. Blogs are an opportunity to provide a less antiseptic view of your company that is more personal and less “corporate”. Blogs can humanize your brand.

6) In Google, Fresher Content = Better Website
Google will periodically crawl websites looking for new and updated content. In general, it is better to have Google crawl your site as often as possible. Sites that get crawled more often have more frequent updates and more authority. Blogging consistently ensures there will be fresh content on your site.

SE Grader  www.segrader.com

The free optimisation tool

SEGrader is a product offered by IEG free of charge to any organisation that needs to  understand how their respective website is performing online.

This latest tool analyses a variety of parameters and delivers a detailed report to the USER.

So how does Google rank your website and how can SE Grader help you to understand the internet and how to achieve Results Online.

What are the parameters which SEGrader judges your website?

Google Ranking

Google ranks all website on a score of N/A to 10 (pages such as Facebook would have a status of 10)

Google interprets a link from page A to page B as a vote, by page A, for page B. But, Google looks at more than the sheer volume of votes, or links a page receives; it also analyses the page that casts the vote. Votes cast by pages that are themselves "important" weigh more heavily and help to make other pages "important"

Google Index
Index or indexing refers to the number of pages within your website. The more pages you have the higher your indexing score will be.

Address Information

Much like your physical house address, your website also has an address and this address is taken from where your website is hosted: So if you trying to see goods or services in the US, ensure that your website is Hosted there. This will have negative Google effect if it is not.

Keyword Density.

These are the keywords that were determined from your content. These words should be the best words to describe what your site is about. If there are words that better describe the service or product that you offer, then your keywords could be optimized better. If there are words present that do not relate strongly to the intended purpose of your site, then your site is not being picked up in the correct context by Google.

SE Grader offers all users the opportunity of understanding their website and an understanding of what is needed in order to sell and succeed in today’s highly competitive internet age.
Follow the advice and your website will have a much higher ranking! Start today!

www.segrader.com