Search Engine Optimization, Online Marketing

13 Dec 2011

10 Common PPC Mistakes That Are Costing You Money

Tags: Adwords Mistakes, Edmonton Adwords, Edmonton Online Advertising
Posted in Blog, Search Engine Optimization | Leave a comment

1) Sticking to Broad Terms – This has got to be the most common mistake. Don’t get lazy… get precise. Narrow down keywords to hit your ideal target user that brings you home the bacon. Yes this may take some testing, but it’s worth it.

2) Thinking Global – People like to know you’re a local company, don’t make them guess. If you’re advertising in Calgary, put Calgary in your ads. Yes, this will force you to build multiple targeted campaigns, but your conversions will surely make it worth your while.

3) Sticking to One ad – First set your ads to run evenly (despite Google’s warning) and always be running two ads against each other. This is called A/B multivirate testing, and all the pros do it.

4) Letting the Content Network Fly Solo – the content network is one of the largest contributors to useless clicks. Be sure to keep a close eye on the networks your ads are showing on and “exclude” ones that are not relevant. Better yet, consider picking them yourself.

5) Forgetting Negative terms – Negative terms are your lifesavers in the Google search pool. To ensure your ads are being shown to the right eyes, use negative keywords to weed out bad searches.

6) Using Telephone Numbers– Telephone numbers in ads are nearly useless. This person is searching via their computer, they are much more likely to click than pick up a phone. Use all the copy room you can to encourage clicks.

7) Stagnant Copy – If you’re trying to produce run of the mill ads, copy the competition. If you want results, you have to be unique and different. Be seasonal, be funny, be different, and reap the benefits.

8) Forgetting URLs – Google allows you to customize your display URL… so take advantage and add relevant keywords. These keywords will show up bolded if someone searches them. Bolded keywords draw your customers eyes and results in more clicks.

9) Not Refining Keywords – If you have deadbeat keywords sucking life out of your CTR, drop them like a bad habit. The end result is a higher click-through rate and a lower CPC.

10) Not Using Google Extension – Google extensions is also often overlooked. This add-on allows you ads to be “click-to-call” ads on mobile devices, or they integrate with a Google Places account to show you on a map – cool… and effective.

23 May 2011

5 Ways to Reduce your CPC & Save Money with Your Ad Campaign

Tags: google adwords tips
Posted in Blog, Quick Tips, Search Engine Marketing, Search Engine Optimization | Leave a comment

Apart from simply bidding less per click, there are plenty of great ways to reduce your CPC, but increase your positioning, relevancy and effectiveness of your ads. Here are 5 great ways to reduce your cost-per-click on your Google Adwords campaigns.

1) Reduce and Categorize Keywords

A classic mistake for a Google Adwords campaigns is a limited number of ads targeted towards too many keywords. Google Adwords will reward you for good click-through-rates by charging you less per click (have a look at a recent post we did on maximizing your CTR). So a great practice is to build keyword groups – and make ads that fit each group. This makes your ads much more targeted, and your CTR’s will go up, while your CPC goes down.

2) Further Refine Keywords Using Exact Match, Phrase Match and Negative Keywords

The clearer you can be with your keywords the better. Google Adwords offers you three tools, to help refine your keywords that are rarely used. They are called Exact Match, Phrase Match and Negative Keywords. For every campaign you run, you should take advantage of these (see a recent post we did on these by clicking the link above for more information). Likely the most important tool is Negative Keywords – this should always be used to help refine your searches. Say for example your keyword is “red shoes”, it’s unlikely that someone searching “red shoes pictures” will click on your ad. Thus making “pictures” a negative keyword will help improve your CTR.

3) Ad Testing & Refinement

In general, it’s always important to tweak copy, titles, wording and positioning as you go through your campaign. The best way to do this is to run two ads, side-by-side against each other. This way you always have a benchmark to work from. If a particular keyword is really performing well – add it to your copy. Or try a different call to action or title – being on top of your ads and monitoring them closely is a good way to optimize their performance and increase your CTR.

4) Keep a Close Eye on Your Networks

Depending on how smart you are with your keywords, you may pay for unnecessary clicks on the display network. Google’s display network tries to find webpages that fit your keywords to show your ad on. Often, what Google deems is a “good fit”, is anything but. Click on the “Networks” tab to review the websites your display ads are showing up on – exclude any that are not a good fit to improve your CTR’s and reduce your CPC.

5) Improve your Quality Score

We’ve talked a lot about quality score in previous blog posts – and this tool is incredibly powerful. If you’re looking to really improve your CTR and reduce your CPC – work on improving your Quality Score. There’s a variety of ways to do it – including being smart with your keywords, ad copy, and landing pages. The better your quality score, the better your chance of getting prime real-estate from Google which will ultimately amp up your CTR’s.

We hope you get to take advantage of these tips on your next Google Adwords campaigns – if you’re interested in having us take a look at your campaign – drop SBX Media a line. We’d be happy to help!

16 May 2011

5 Creative Uses for Google’s Keyword Tool

Tags: google adwords tips, google keyword tool tips
Posted in Blog, Blogging, Quick Tips, Search Engine Optimization | Leave a comment

Google’s Keyword tool is not just for advertisers. There are many ways to use it to help start-up businesses, building websites, blog content and more. In this blog post we’ve listed 5 creative ways to use this tool that you probably haven’t thought of yet.

1) Find Keywords For Your Website Content

If you’re in the process of writing a new website for your business, you’ll want to use Google’s Keyword tool religiously when building out your content plan. Gearing your copy towards specific commonly-searched keyword will make a huge difference in your organic search results. Or on the other spectrum, you may want to go after lesser-used search terms to avoid competition. Regardless of your path, this tool is a must.

2) Research Your Competition’s Keywords

If you’re looking to improve your SEO ranking’s on Google – take a look at your competition’s keywords. Do your’s align? Work on tweaking your content and copy to fit the exact keywords you’re after, or better yet – ones your competition has missed.

3) Focus Blog Keywords to Improve Adsense Income

If you’re a blogger who uses Google Adsense ads to help bring in some revenue, you can use this tool to help gear your blog posts towards higher paying keywords. By using the CPC tool, you can get a good idea on new blog topics to go after to help improve your Adsense income.

4) Get Ideas on CPC for Keywords

If you’re an Adwords advertiser, you can use Google’s Keyword tool to gauge your potential CPC on these keywords and their search volume. You can also use this tool search out keywords that can get the job done but for a lower CPC.

5) Check Your Ad Landing Pages to Ensure they Match Your Keywords

Another great use for the Keyword Tool is using the webpage search tool to determine if your ad landing pages are indeed matching the keywords you’re targeting and in your ads. As we know from a previous post – this is a great way to improve your Quality Score and reduce your CPC.

09 May 2011

3 Cool Advanced Targeting Options for Google’s Keyword Tool

Tags: adwords tips edmonton, google keywords tool, Search Engine Marketing
Posted in Blog, Quick Tips, Search Engine Marketing, Search Engine Optimization | Leave a comment

1) Countries & Linguistics

Depending on the country your advertising in you should consider using alterative keywords. Take for example the keyword “cell phone”- in many parts of the world, this is called a simply a “mobile”. Another example is the keyword “aluminum” – which is spelt “aluminium” elsewhere in the world . By segmenting and searching for keywords based on specific countries, you can be sure you’re targeting the right keywords, and getting the right message across to your customers.

2) Mobile Statistics

The mobile internet will soon surpass desktop usage. It’s an emerging channel that very few Adwords Marketers are using – therefore, the CPC is very low. Regardless, mobile users are drastically different than their desktop counterparts – use this tool to gear ads specifically for them.

3) Competition

If you’ve got a limited budget, targeting keywords with little or no competition is great way to keep your CPC down. The “Filter Keywords” section allows you to do this with  low, medium or high check boxes. You may find that by targeting common miss-spellings of certain words your can get great return at a really low cost. Using this tool can give you a great idea of the most common miss-spellings of your keywords.

We hope you enjoyed this post on cool advanced targeting options for Google’s Keyword Tool – this is just a taste, take some time to play around with the tool, you’ll be surprised at the type of functionality it offers.

02 May 2011

5 Tips to Take Advantage of Google’s Keyword Tool

Tags: google adwords tips, google keywords tool
Posted in Blog, Quick Tips, Search Engine Marketing, Search Engine Optimization | Leave a comment

Google’s Keyword Tool is a great asset to anyone wanting to start-up online. It’s platform has a variety of powerful options that can really benefit your website and your online presence. In this post we’ve reviewed some of the most helpful functions. Enjoy!

1) Webpage Search

This search option is very useful. You can search your homepage, your competitions pages, or any page within your site to determine the keywords you rank well for. This is very useful to help improve your SEO rankings, or improve your ad landing pages, or even help earn more money using Adsense ads. This is a powerful tool – use it often.

2) Keyword Search

Here is where you enter specific keywords you’re targeting to get a good idea on search volumes, both globally and locally, and also competition (or more depending on the results you setup). I like to search only single keywords here to gauge the most popular search terms for each keyword. Likely for any particular term this tool will spit out 100-200 keywords – so adding multiple keywords isn’t always that helpful. Experiment on your own to determine what works best for you.

3) Use Synonyms Button

The button below the “word or phrase” box labeled “Only show ideas closely related to my search terms” is the new version of the “use synonyms” button. When this tool is unchecked, it will search popular synonyms of your keywords to give you an idea of search queries you may be missing. This is a great way to develop keyword groups to better target your online advertisements.

4) Determine Negative Keywords

For anyone using Google Adwords – use the Keyword Tool to determine your negative keywords. By searching the keywords you’re after you can determine which words you would want as negative keywords. Be sure to click the “Only show ideas closely related to my search terms” button first. For example, if I’m a bulldog breeder, and I want to target the word “bulldog”, some popular search terms that come up include “bulldog rescue” or “stuffed bulldog”, therefore, I would know to put –rescue and –stuffed as negative keywords.

5) Start Broad, Then Refine

The best part of the Google Keyword tool is it’s ability to help you group your keywords. Once you have 5-6 keyword groups you can further refine these based on the results that come up for each and every one. For example if I were selling “karate lessons” I could likely break this up into three groups – karate lessons, martial art lessons, self-defense lessons. Then after using the keyword tool on “self-defense lessons”, I may determine that I should gear some specific ads towards “self-defense lessons for women” to capture those searches.

Ultimately how you use Google’s Keyword Tool is up to you – but with it’s plethora of basic and advanced options, it’s a very powerful tool for online marketers.

08 Apr 2011

3 Great Marketing Strategies for Golf Courses

Tags: golf club social media marketing, golf networking, golf social media
Posted in Blog, Search Engine Marketing, Search Engine Optimization, Social Media Marketing | 2 Comments

Golf is a game built on tradition, but that doesn’t mean your golf course marketing strategy needs to be. If you’re having a hard time getting new members, filling your tee-sheets, selling your merchandise, and packing your tournaments and events, you may need to start re-thinking your golf marketing strategy.

As an avid golf blogger, 6 years experience in the industry and now working in the marketing business, I’ve found that the golf industry has really not kept up with the times when it comes to marketing and advertising. Since the invent of social media and networking , online advertising, and website optimization, golf courses seem to have paid little attention. Time and time again I see golf course ads in magazines, newspaper, radio, television and direct mail letters. Where is the more targeted approach with web 2.0 golf marketing strategies? In this article we’ll discuss three great marketing strategies that golf courses should be taking advantage of.

Golf Social Media & Networking

A simple search on Facebook for the words “golf course” or “golf club” shows you how few golf courses are actually taking advantage of this great new marketing medium. This baffles me. Facebook specifically, is a perfect fit for golf course marketing. With a little creativity and work, you can easily build a dedicated and engaged following for your golf course on Facebook. Once built, you can update your fans on anything your heart desires – fill last-minute tee-time cancellations in seconds, share your corporate banquet / event capabilities, pose surveys, help advertise your club events and tournaments, and so much more. The best part? Once your golf course Facebook page and following is set up, advertising and marketing is completely free!

If you’re interested in learning more about how you can leverage social media and networking for your golf course, let us know.

Online Advertising for Golf Courses

Let’s face it, the golf industry is a pretty saturated market. In nearly every large city across North America you can find 20-100 golf courses within the near vicinity to play a round at. Many golf courses struggle with standing out above this noise. With that said, very few golf courses are taking advantage of online advertising to help get them noticed.

Traditional marketing channels like newspaper, magazines and television are expensive, and relatively untargeted. Whether you’re using LinkedIn advertising to get new corporate clients, Facebook ads for filling your Men’s Open or Google ads to help fill your mid-afternoon tee-time lulls – with these channels you can really narrow down who you want to advertise to, and on little dime! For example, with online advertising, you could actually target single 40-something year old golfers, who enjoy wine for your next mixer for no more than $0.50 a click. There’s no way to do this using traditional marketing mediums.

If you want to get involved in online advertising for your golf course, it’s easy to start up, if you’re tight on time and want us to help, let us know, we’d be happy to work with you.

Website Optimization for Golf Courses

In general, I think this is a particular sore point when it comes to golf course marketing. More and more, your customers will be searching your golf course via online channels. How does your website look? Is it professional? Can it be viewed on mobile devices? Does it provide the accurate information your customers need? Can it be found?

If you cannot answer all these questions with confidence, it may be time to update your golf course website. Moving your website to an easy-to-use, professional and strategic design that your course staff updates is the best way to truly provide your customers with an up-to-date, ideal golf web experience. Further to that, working on some simple search-engine optimization strategies and link building will help get you noticed above your competition. Once set up, also don’t forget to integrate your social media platforms to help build your following.

If you feel your golf course website is out-of-date, or needs a makeover, we’d be happy to work with you to develop a strategy and build for a new website roll-out.

30 Mar 2011

4 Ways to Overcome Writers Block for Blogs

Posted in Blog, Blogging, Search Engine Optimization | Leave a comment

Blogger burnout? Writers Block? Need new ideas to keep that blog fresh and engaging?

I’m not going to sugar coat it, there is a high probability your blog will be dead within a few months. It’s life cut short before you’ve had a chance to blog your heart out, or maybe that’s the problem. You blogged your heart out and now the ideas have stopped flowing. Worse yet, if your blog has been a hub for your social media activity, you’re now risking cutting off the fresh content for your online communities.

Here are a few ideas to help generate topics for your blog and hopefully breath new life into your writing.

1) Review Your Analytics

You do have this installed don’t you? Or better yet, you do look at you web analytics once in a blue moon don’t you? If you have a chance, take a peek into two areas of your analytics.

The first is the terms people have searched for on your website. That search bar at the top of your site or blog can provide great insight into:

what people are interested in on your website
or what people would like to find on your website.

If you are using Google Analytics, log on and go to the content overview. Your site may already be tracking search results through the subfolder “/search/” or perhaps a parameter like “/?s=…./” . Want to make life a bit easier for tracking search? If you are using google analytics Read the rest of this entry »

19 Mar 2011

Writing Web Content – For Bots vs. People

Tags: Search Engine Optimization, Web Content
Posted in Blog, Blogging, Search Engine Optimization | Leave a comment

There is a lot of dispute over which is better, writing content for search-engine robots, or for the viewers the search engines send. You’ll find varying opinions everywhere. In our opinion, it’s best to write titles and subtitle for the bots, but always keep in mind that your main content needs to make sense for your consumers as well.

Here’s our thought process:

Getting ranked #1 on Google can really help boost your organic traffic. To do this you have to be smart about keyword usage, and utilize some SEO best practices. Many of which are not customer facing. For those that are, like header tags and titles – be sure to use a smart engaging titles with good, relevant keywords. The bots will like you, and rank you well.

When it comes to content – write for your end user, but try to incorporate the same keywords you used in your titles. Keep in mind, Google hates keyword stuffing. Google has algorithms to determine if you’re stuffing keywords into your content to the point that it’s just nonsense. Besides, you’re not even considering the real people who will actually buy from you. To that end, keyword stuffing is pointless – you’re better off trying to rank well for one keyword, than have a mediocre ranking for many.

Our tip? Stick to one or two keywords per article, and be diligent in using them throughout the content.

02 Dec 2010

Youtube is a Powerful SEO Magnet

Tags: youtube and search engines, youtube and seo, youtube seo. youtube search engine, youtube tips, youtube traffic, youtube tricks
Posted in Blog, Search Engine Optimization, Social Media Marketing | Leave a comment

Not many people know that Youtube has recently surpassed Yahoo to become the second-largest search engine, behind Google.

Let me show you something. Open up Google in a new window. Type in “how to clean silver”, press enter. What do you see? Two Youtube videos sitting in the number two spot. Pick another topic of “how to” and you’ll start to see a trend. Youtube videos rank very well on search engines, sometimes better than companies websites themselves. A great example is the recent “Old Spice – The Man Your Man Could Smell Like” ads – typing in “Old Spice ads” in Google – oldspice.com jumps down to the number three spot on the Google rankings.

What are the tricks to getting ranked well for your Youtube videos? Well, much like your website, there’s a couple ways to get your message above the clutter… and here are some simple tips:

• Make a professional, and high resolution video

• Pick a clear, concise and well-written title for your video

• Take the time to add a good description and keyword tags

• Add links to your social media accounts in the description

• Share your video on your other social media accounts

• Encourage people to view your video through external links

• Encourage comments, and reply to feedback that the video generates

These few tips should give you a good head start. If you’re struggling to reach the top of the search engine rankings with your site, create a video that focuses on your keywords, and you may be surprised by the results.

Archive for the ‘Search Engine Optimization’ Category

10 Common PPC Mistakes That Are Costing You Money

5 Ways to Reduce your CPC & Save Money with Your Ad Campaign

1) Reduce and Categorize Keywords

2) Further Refine Keywords Using Exact Match, Phrase Match and Negative Keywords

3) Ad Testing & Refinement

4) Keep a Close Eye on Your Networks

5) Improve your Quality Score

5 Creative Uses for Google’s Keyword Tool

1) Find Keywords For Your Website Content

2) Research Your Competition’s Keywords

3) Focus Blog Keywords to Improve Adsense Income

4) Get Ideas on CPC for Keywords

5) Check Your Ad Landing Pages to Ensure they Match Your Keywords

3 Cool Advanced Targeting Options for Google’s Keyword Tool

1) Countries & Linguistics

2) Mobile Statistics

3) Competition

5 Tips to Take Advantage of Google’s Keyword Tool

1) Webpage Search

2) Keyword Search

3) Use Synonyms Button

4) Determine Negative Keywords

5) Start Broad, Then Refine

4 Ways to Overcome Writers Block for Blogs

1) Review Your Analytics

Writing Web Content – For Bots vs. People

Top 5 Web Content Writing Tips

1) Great Titles Get Noticed

2) Use Pictures & Video

3) Use Subtitles to Section Off Content

4) Add Internal Links

5) Add a P.S.

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