At the end of 2015, Google announced something called ‘customer match’. Customer match is a facet of Google AdWords that allows you to target your advertising more effectively. It works by uploading a database of customer email addresses (minimum 1000) to the AdWords interface. When these email addresses are used to log in to a Google service (Google Search, YouTube or Gmail) they will be served targeted ads through the websites they are visiting. 

Customer match is an interesting form of marketing as it targets high value existing customers, as opposed to new opportunities. This can be very useful for things like reward programs. If you are marketing an airline for example, and your existing customers start searching for flights via Google search, you can use customer match to target them with advertising around air miles or the latest travel deals you’re offering. Using customer match can be tailored very specifically to customers that are most likely to click your link, because they’re already looking for something similar. If you think of traditional broad advertising as throwing a net out, customer search is more like spear-fishing. 

You may recall a similar product from early 2015 called RLSA (Remarketing lists for search ads), or ‘remarketing' . Remarketing targeted existing customers in a similar way, but got the database through different means. Instead of having a list of email addresses, it needed a tag on your website that would track visitors and install a cookie in their browser. Then Google could track the customer while they visited other websites and serve relevant ads as they browsed. Again, the minimum database size to use remarketing is 1000.

Both of these approaches have their benefits. Customer match is useful for split-testing, as it is easy to submit certain groups of email addresses to the target database, remove them to add a different group, and then compare the results. Remarketing doesn’t depend on obtaining an email address, so customers can be added to the database just by visiting your homepage, without filling out any forms. 

The question therefore is not ‘Which one should I use?’, but ‘How do I use both effectively?’. Obviously there is going to be an overlap when using both products. New email addresses that are obtained will most likely be from visitors to your website, in which case their information will be captured by both customer match and remarketing. If you are wanting to have only unique users to target, you would have to write exclusions for these lists. 

The point to take away here is that in order to maximise the potential of AdWords, you need to be constantly maintaining and tweaking the targeting. Much like a successful website, successful marketing is not something that can be left alone for months at a time. It must be dynamic, evolving with technology and with your business as a whole.

If you want to set up Customer Match, AdWords, or need help with digital marketing in general, get in touch for a free consult.

Having a mobile website isn't just to boost your website sales and enquiries. Research from Google suggesting that the relationship between digital and in-store shopping is far more connected than you might think.  In fact, having a good mobile website could lead to a better in-store shopping experience. 

The study, by Google, Ipsos MediaCT and Sterling Brands, reveals that consumers want more information and customized experiences during their shopping journey: Two in three shoppers who tried to find information within a store say they didn't find what they needed, and 43% of them left frustrated. And 71% of in-store shoppers who use smartphones for online research say their device has become more important to their in-store experience.

Retailers need not worry that customers may just use their mobile to shop on their ecommerce store. However, 3 in 4 survey respondents who find local information in search results helpful are more likely to visit stores. 

Shoppers would find this information very useful in search results:

75%	74%	66%
PRICE OF ITEM AT A NEARBY STORE	ITEM IS IN STOCK AT A NEARBY STORE	LOCATION OF CLOSEST STORE WITH ITEM IN STOCK
63%	59%	56%
DETAILS ABOUT LOCAL STORES (HOURS, PHONE NUMBER)	MAP SHOWING WHICH STORES CARRY THE ITEM SEARCHED FOR	WHAT ELSE IS AVAILABLE AT THE STORE

The reality is shoppers are using their smartphones to search for items nearby so they can visit your store. Often, they will know what they are looking for and be browsing online before walking through your doors. You should use this opportunity to make your website your best sales assistant by answering the above needs. Since Google now rank those with responsive design higher in mobile search, you should seriously consider getting responsive design for your website if you don't have this already. 
 

As Google Partners, Zeald were  delighted to host 'Googlers' Laura Retsos & John Ball from Google Australia at an exclusive event in September 2015. The presentations were informative about how you can use Google tools to promote your website and then persuade your visitors to become customers once they hit your landing page/ website. 

John Ball,  Google AU/NZ Country Director - SMB, spoke about The NZ Digital Landscape. He covered some interesting statistics including how much mobile has changed the way we interact with businesses online. Google call these interactions micro-moments. 



Google Agency Development Manager AU/NZ, Laura Retsos, went on to talk about Your Business on Google. Laura covered the basics of Google AdWords and how Google online marketing tools can be effective for small businesses. 

Finally, Brent Kelly, Zeald Sales and Marketing Director, talked about Smart Results Online with Google. The biggest takeaway here is that you can spend time and money using all the tools Google can offer you, but still not get any results if your website doesn't convince your visitors to become customers. 

We will have video clips of the event available shortly, so stay tuned.  If you have any questions about how Zeald can help you with your online marketing or website, get in touch >>


L-R John Ball (Google AU), Brent Kelly (Zeald), Laura Retsos (Google AU) & Dave Cullen (Zeald)
 

View more images of the event

Google Adwords are a great way to appear in Google searches, and direct more traffic to your website. In fact, Adwords campaigns can work so well you might be overwhelmed with new customers. They can also be a money pit for those who don't know what they are doing.

An Adwords campaign is very easy and quick to set up, and get your ads running in no time. However, ongoing management of Adwords is a little trickier if you don't know what you are doing, or have a novice "jack-of-all-trades" developer running your Adwords for you.

How does it work?

Google Adwords, or other pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, put simply is an advert that directs those who click on the ad to your website. Each time someone clicks on the advert, you get charged a cost-per-click. You set a budget for how much you are willing to pay per-click for a certain keyword; different keywords will cost more than others to say, appear on the first page. When someone searches in Google by typing in your specified keyword, your ad will display. Because you are only being charged when people click, PPC means you are only paying for people who were interested by your ad.

Alternatively, you can pay per impressions; the amount of people who have viewed the ad, regardless of whether they clicked the link.

Common DIY mistakes

• Your location is incorrect. Being found online in your local area is often really important, especially if you provide a service. If someone is searching with their location specified, and your ad incorrectly pops up or doesn't pop up at all, you've wasted your time and are missing out on business.
• Your keyword is too broad. You don't want to appear everywhere for everything associated with that keyword. It's not helping your business if you are a builder and your ad appears for searches like 'house rentals'.
• Your ad appears for negative searches. You select a keyword for your ad to appear in search, but that keyword also has some negative associations. It's not a good look if you appear where you shouldn't. For example, if you sell luxury handbags, you wouldn't want your ad to pop up when someone searches 'counterfeit handbags', or 'leather manufacturer hurts animals'.

Doing your own Google Adwords can take a lot of time and resources, especially when you are new to it. You can spend time not only researching keywords, but also then implementing the ads. You may end up wasting money and time by not having the most effective keywords for your business. If you have one dedicated employee working on your Adwords, what happens if they are sick, or leaves?
 

A qualified expert can save you money

An expert in Google Adwords has passed Google exams to become a certified Google Partner. They have a complete understanding and extensive experience in PPC. These professionals are passionate about PPC. They live and breathe it on a daily basis, so are constantly up-to-date with any changes Google may have made. They regularly participate in keyword research , so you will not waste money by using ineffective keywords. Plus in a large enough company, a whole team is trained, so one can simply take over if someone is sick or leaves.

Zeald have a team of Adwords professionals. Some of our clients who were previously managing their own Adwords campaigns, have had some great success when switching over to Zeald. One such company increased their traffic by 700% and their conversions by 160% within 5 months. Their campaign was so successful they had to turn off their ads to keep up with the demand. Adwords helped their business grow, and they can turn this campaign on again when they need to.

Regardless of whether you go it alone, or hire a professional, PPC campaigns are a great tool for any SME. At Zeald, we have fantastic resources for any company who wants to give PPC a try on their own, and we also have a dedicated team who deals with PPC on a daily basis.

If you would like to know more, please click the image below and fill out the form, one of our team will get in touch with you. 

 

Late last year, Google stopped providing outsiders with the information that tells website owners what search phrases were used to find your website

They made this change for security reasons (Google Official Blog, 21/05/10). Mainly to protect website users’ search behaviour from being watched by third parties.

Prior to this change, when a user performed a Google search using a phrase such as “Auckland Plumber” and the user clicked on your search result, Google, would pass these search phrases to your website. Through your reports you could learn what search phrases people used to find your website.

As of September 2013 this information was encrypted and no longer accessible to website owners.

_{The below example shows a Search Phrase as an ‘h’.}

 

This information provides valuable marketing insight. It is a shame to lose it, but not all hope is lost... We can source most of this information using Google Webmaster Tools and Google Adwords.

Using Webmaster Tools search queries report

The Search Queries report  shows what keyword searches your site is ranking for and what keywords have generated traffic to your website. See below.

Let’s have a look at the top phrase used by people to find the above listed site which is ‘Plumbers Christchurch’. It has 77 Impressions which means 77 users have used this search phrase to search in Google and have seen your website link in the search results.

Clicks means 63 people that have clicked the listing in the search results. Click Through Rate (CTR) means 82% of the 77 impressions clicked on your link to your site. This information is extremely valuable and helps you to determine if your keywords will drive targeted traffic to your website to buy or enquire about your products and/or services.

Learn more about Google Webmaster tools.

Using Google Adwords keyword planner

The Keyword Planner is a free tool that enables you to identify and analyse potential keywords that can be used to direct traffic to your website through Google Adword Campaigns. With this tool you can see exact traffic numbers for Advertisements that are associated with specific keywords.

^{Please note to access the keywords in the Keyword Planner, you do not need to fund your account, you only need to sign up for Google Adwords.}

In this example you can see information based on the keywords for ‘plumbing Christchurch’. If you were to run a campaign that targeted the search terms ‘plumbing Christchurch’. You can see that approximately 0 - 1.54 clicks per day can be predicted for those find the site with the keywords plumbing Christchurch. It also predicts that 15.8 to 80.1 users might see the site’s Adword campaign on a daily basis depending on the budget. This tool is useful to experiment with your keywords, to see the approximate Cost Per Click (CPC) on your keywords, and to see local search trends to name a few. Click here for help with the Keyword Tool.

Webmaster Tools and the Keyword Planner provide excellent assistance with identifying and utilizing highly targeted, planned keywords to drive traffic to your site and to find out how users are accessing it. Please contact Zeald Support for more information.

 

Directory listings are a great way to improve your SEO and enable people to find your business.

What is a relatively painless task to complete, can work wonders on your Google ranking. Google likes when your website links to other quality websites, such as a Localist page, and as such boosts your ranking.

A few things to keep in mind when creating your directory listing:

• Make sure everything you write is correct. If you forget a number in your phone number, how will customers contact you?

• Put your physical address before your P.O. Box address

• If a map shows your location, make sure the map marker is visible and in the right place

• Include your open hours

• Add an email address that is the best for someone contacting you, and will be checked regularly.

• Add pictures of your shop, or products to stand out

• Make sure you add your logo to the listing
  
  

Reviews are available on most listings. These can be both a blessing and sometimes a bit of trouble. Reviews can be great at boosting your listing in the directory and in search engines. With Google, just 10 reviews that improve the rank of your listing in search results. However, if a customer had a bad experience and gives you a bad review, it can be hard or impossible to remove. In this case, make sure your next customer who reviews your business had a more positive experience, and try to make that negative an anomaly.

Consistency is important across your directory listings. If one listing says one phone number, but another says something different, not only will this hinder your customers reaching you, but can also affect your ranking in Google. So make sure you have someone on your team who will systematically go through your listings every 3-6 months to check they are all correct.

When it comes to directory listings, the more quality directories you are in, the better. That way you have made sure no matter where your customer looks, you are most likely in there.

Directories I would recommend:

• Localist
• Google Places
• Yellow
• Hot Frog
• Finda
• Yelp
• No Cowboys -Best for Tradespeople
• Foursquare -Best for hospitality, retail, entertainment

When trying to decide what keywords to optimise your website for, it’s easy to focus on broad terms like “builders” or “website design”. While these terms tend to generate a high number of searches each month, they are also highly competitive and tend to have low conversion rates.

Instead, you should consider turning your focus to the less commonly searched phrases that consist of long tail keywords. Long tail keyword searches are those that are made up of about three to six keywords and are used when the user is looking for a more specific result e.g. someone searching “master builder in Albany” instead of the generic term “builder”.

One of the main benefits of focusing on long tail keywords is that it is easy to see what the user’s intent is and therefore provide information that is relevant to them. For example, if someone searches for the term “weight loss”, it’s impossible to know exactly what they are looking for. Are they looking for the cause of their recent rapid weight loss, or are they looking for a way to lose weight? This ambiguity means that although the information that appears high in the search results may contain extremely informative and well-written content, it is likely that it does not contain the answer the searcher was looking for. This results in a high bounce rate for the generic terms. On the other hand, if someone is searching for “ways to lose weight easily”, it is easy to see that they are looking for weight loss tips. This means that the top-ranking results for this search are more likely to enjoy a higher conversion rate as the visitors will be more qualified.

The use and optimisation of long tail keywords has been around for a long time, but an increase of the number of people using these in their searches is likely. The introduction of software such as Apple’s Siri or Google Now, both of which allow people to voice their questions directly to their phone mean that searches phrased as questions are likely to become more common. This will allow businesses to provide more relevant results to searchers.

A good tool for finding long tail keyword searches relevant to your industry is Google Adwords. Type in a generic phrase related to your business and then sort by “Local Monthly Searches”. This tool shows the different variations of keywords that people have been searching and how many times in the last month that particular phrase has been searched for. The ones with the most searches are generally the shorter, highly competitive keywords. Have a look for the longer tail keywords with a reasonable amount of searches and choose some of these to optimise your content for. The more searches a phrase gets, the higher the competition to rank for it. However, it is important to remember that the keywords you decide to choose do have some people searching for them – it’s easy to rank high of obscure phrases, but if no-one’s searching for them then you’re not going to get any visitors.

Google makes, on average, about 500 changes to its search engine algorithms each year.  Google do this to improve the quality of search results. They started making big, noticeable changes back in 2011 with the Panda algorithm and again in 2012 with the Penguin algorithm, in an effort to punish those that were cheating the SEO system to get their results to the top of the page. Read on to find out more about Panda, Penguin and what it means for SEO.

How Google works

Google basically has an automated system that searches the internet looking for new websites and updated content through links from other websites already known to Google. Once it finds a new website or content it sends the information back to its datacentre where it is stored (cached).

Google uses a very complex formula or algorithm to calculate the relevancy and the quality of a web page to a user's search query. Read more about how Google works.

This formula uses many factors to help calculate the relevancy and quality of a web page, including and not limited to:

• Keywords found in the content of the page
• The headings
• Links on the page
• Hidden meta data found in the code of the page
• External links that link to the page

Google awards ranking for a page based on how often the keywords appear, how prominent they are on the page and the location of the keywords on the page.

Therefore, the more focused you are on a certain topic, the better you will rank, as Google will believe that you are an expert on the topic.

How Panda and Penguin have shook things up

Panda was designed to weed out the bad sites from the good to improve search results. “Content Farms” are pages that are overly optimised that offer little value to the searcher. They are merely pages of content with keywords that are designed to attract traffic so they can use those page views to generate advertising revenue.  Duplicate content is also penalised as it is seen to offer little value to the searcher so the pages appear low down in the search rankings.

Top Tip – If you legitimately offer duplicate content – for example have multiple sites for your business – then you can use rel=canonical to point back to the original content.  Ask us about how to do this with your Zeald site.

Penguin was more focused on punishing sites that were abusing links to gain search engine rankings.  Google’s idea behind Penguin is that it wanted people to focus more on creating great web content rather than optimisation. People who paid for links from low quality link directories, exchanges and other sites would more than likely have noticed a drop in their ranking. What this means is you want to have really good links to your site from other quality sites, you can do this by having great quality content that is worth sharing.

You also want to use different anchor text linking to your site (the words that hyperlink).  The anchor text of a back link tells Google what the website is about. So it is/was common practice to make a keyword the hyperlink. However if there are an abnormal number of identical anchor texts pointing to a site then you will be penalised. Penguin wants you to use more natural SEO. For example if you are always using identical keywords to link to your site then try to mix it up by using different words or word clusters that mean similar things and also non-targeted words that would be a natural link such as “click here.”

Based on the data that showed sites with 60% or more of their site with keyword anchor text were penalised; a general rule to avoid the Penguin penalty could be the following:

• 60% of backlinks should be URL based or non-keyword anchor texts like “click here”

• 30% broad match or partial keyword and rephrased anchor texts

• Only 10% exact match keyword anchor texts

Other things to be aware of that affect your ranking.

Keep your bounce rates low. This means when someone searches using a keyword and clicks on your site only to quickly click back to Google sends a signal to Google that you are not relevant for their search.  To reduce bounce rates some of the things you can do is; keep your site load time to less than 3 seconds, make your message immediately clear, consider a responsive designed site and keep distractions to a minimum.

If you would like some help with your SEO or content talk to our Professional Services Team.

We’ve recently undergone the process of getting the Zeald office photographed for Google Business Photos and we’re stoked with the outcome. Google Business Photos allows customers to get a look inside your business before they decide to visit you. Similar to the street view function on Google maps, Google business photos are made up of real pictures of your business, providing visitors with a 360 view of your location. These virtual tours are visible on Google searches, Google maps and Google+ Local and can also be embedded on your own website, allowing you to easily show customers what to expect when they come to visit you.

If you would like to get your own business photographed, you will need to contact one of the Google trusted photographers in your area. They will work with you to arrange your own personalised photoshoot and will then upload the images for you, so you can sit back and wait for your very own tour to appear online.

 

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Whether you’re a small, home-based business or a large international company, you’re probably aware that ranking highly on search queries is something that you want to be doing. However, you’re also probably aware that this is much easier said than done.

Think about that last time you used Google to search for a product or service. Whether you were looking for a plumber, electrician or clothing, chances are that you wanted to find something located in, or at least able to be delivered to, your city.

Studies have shown that 53% of searches on mobiles and 20% of searches on a desktop had local intent; and that only counts the people specifically searching for something using a local modifier such as “Auckland”, something people commonly leave out yet still expect local results.

This is a crucial point in understanding SEO. Search engines want to provide the most relevant results to their searchers, which typically means showing them local content. What’s the use in showing a pet shop in New York when the person is using a computer located in Auckland?

This means that making sure your website is optimised to rank locally is extremely important. So what should you be doing to increase your chances of being one of the top results in someone’s search query?

1. Google Local (Google Places)

Having a Google Local listing is one of the most important factors for making sure you’re ranking high for searches with local intent. Therefore it’s vital that you claim your business listing. Google Local is the new version of Google places and is integrated with Google+, Google’s own social network. To claim your Google Local listing, complete the following steps:

1. Go to plus.google.com and log in. You login details are the same as your Google account (which you use for things like Gmail and Google docs). If you don’t already have an account, sign up for one by clicking the red box in the upper right hand corner

2. Once you’ve logged in to your Google plus account, you need to create a business page. To do this, click on ‘more’ on the left sidebar and then select ‘pages’. Click on the ‘Create new page’ box in the upper right hand corner

3. Select ‘local business or place’ and enter your phone number. Make sure that the phone number you enter is the main one you want your customers to phone

4. Google will bring up a list of any businesses it knows of that have that phone number. If you see your business on the list, select it and confirm your info. If you don’t see it, select ‘Add your business to Google’ and enter your details.

5. Finish creating your page by following the steps provided by Google

IMPORTANT NOTE: You need to ensure that the details you use on this page and any other places around that internet that list your company name, address and phone number (NAP) are exactly the same (e.g. 0508 932 748 instead of 0508932748 or 09 415 7575 and 42 Tawa Dr, Albany, Auckland 0632 instead of 42 Tawa Drive, Auckland). Google will rank you higher in local searches if they see that your information is uniform across the web. Even small differences such as Dr instead of Drive make a difference, so pick one and stick with it.

2. Get Citations

Citations are anywhere online that shows your NAP (name, address, phone number). This includes your own website, online directories and your social media profiles. These citations are important as they show Google that your information is correct and that you are a real business. As stated above, make sure that your NAP is exactly the same across all your listings. Getting everything in the same format may take a while, especially if you’ve already created many listings, but this step is very important and will pay off when you get it right.

3. Get Customer Reviews

Customer reviews and interactions are becoming more and more important when it comes to SEO. Try and get your customers to review your products and services on your Google+ page. Ways you could do this include emailing them to thank them for their purchase and encourage them to leave a quick review. However, don’t fall in to the trap of paying people to write positive reviews or creating fake ones. These reviews can do more damage than good if discovered. Genuine reviews are always best. It’s also important to realise that not all of these reviews will be positive – which can actually be a good thing. A mix of positive and negative reviews can help to show that the reviews are genuine.

Google Docs is something we use a lot of here at Zeald, and is a great tool that we feel many other businesses can benefit from. Google Docs is a free Web-based office suite and data storage service offered by Google. It is a free alternative to costly suites such as Microsoft Office, allowing you to create spread sheets, presentations and documents with ease. Google created Docs based on the idea that not all users have the need for the more technical functions. This means they have created a simpler suite with many advantages that set it apart.
 
Google Docs is an online application which means that it can be accessed from any computer with an internet connection. By simply logging in, users are able to see their documents from wherever they are. This is handy for people who are always on the move or need to shift between computers a lot. Documents created on software such as Microsoft Office can be uploaded onto Google Docs which makes Google Docs a handy option for storage.  Each user is given 1GB of storage space for free and documents created within Google Docs do not count towards this quota. Users are also able to pay for additional storage.



Google Docs is highly focused on aiding collaboration. Users are able to choose who is able to view their documents and give other users permission to edit them.  Up to 50 users can edit a document at one time, and each user is able to see what the other users are doing in real time. Google Docs also has a chat feature within the document to allow users to have discussions during their collaboration. This means there is no need for email attachments and multiple copies of documents. Instead there is one copy of the document that is accessible to everyone who has permission to view and edit it. Google Docs also keep a record of past versions of the document, which means that if someone makes a change you’re not happy with, you will be able to restore it back to the old version.



 Another useful feature of Google Docs is the form creator. Users are able to create interactive forms with ease and email them straight to the people they wish to fill them in. When a form is created it is put on its own webpage so the link can be passed on to people. Google Docs will then record their responses in a spreadsheet for the user to easily analyse.  This is useful for things such as surveys. Just create the survey using the form creator, send it out to the people you wish to survey and read the results through the Google Docs spreadsheet!

 Joining Google Docs is as simple as signing in to your Google account and clicking on the 'Documents' tab or visiting www.docs.google.com and signing in to your google account. If you don’t already have a Google account, you can create one for free by visiting www.docs.google.com and clicking 'Sign up for a new Google Account'. There’s no software to download – it’s all on the net. So sign up, sign in and have a play. We’re sure you’ll find it as handy as we do!
 

We want to help... Please don't forget we are right here. We have a team experienced in achieving great results for businesses. We can help you with Online Marketing, SEO, Results Consulting and more...Let us help you generate more sales and enquiries with your website.  Please talk to us

We are often asked this question not long after a new website has gone live. To answer this question we first of all need to explain how Google works…

Google employs some of the world’s greatest minds to continually develop the complex ranking process which ensures that the top results of a user's search are of the highest relevance and quality.

This is of course what makes Google the world’s most popular search engine.

Understanding how Google works

Google is constantly looking for new websites and updated content on the Internet using automated programs known as 'spiders' or 'robots'.

These robots use links between websites to travel around the internet and find new websites. If your website is not linked to the rest of the web, the robots will not be able to access it. And Google will not be able to find it.

When Google finds a new web page, it will analyse the content, known as 'crawling' the content. It will then transport the information back to the Google data centre, where Google stores it, known as 'caching'.

Once Google has a copy of your website in its index, it will send out the robots to check for new content on a continual basis. If the robots find new or updated content Google will add it to its index. The period between visits will vary from site to site, but the robots are intelligent and they will not waste their time visiting websites regularly if the content does not change regularly.

Relevancy

Once Google knows about your website, it then needs to calculate the 'relevancy' of each page to a user's search term. So when a user performs a search with Google, Google calculates the relevancy of search term to the web page. If the search term is not relevant, or the search term does not match the content of the web page, Google will not list the page in the results.

Google also uses geographic location to help match a website to a user's search query. Google will try to serve web pages that match the users geographic location.

Quality

Relevancy is just part of the equation. Remember there are likely to be hundreds, thousands or millions of other websites that are 'relevant' to a user's search query. And only a few spots on the front page of the search results. Therefore, the next thing Google does is calculate the 'quality'. This allows Google to position the web pages that are most relevant and of the highest quality at the top of the results page. This is of course what makes Google the world’s most popular search engine.

Calculating the relevancy and quality

Google uses a very complex 'formula' or 'algorithm' to calculate the relevancy and the quality of a web page to a user's search query.

This formula uses many factors to help calculate the relevancy and quality of a web page, including and not limited to:

• Keywords found in the content of the page
• The headings
• Links on the page
• Hidden Meta data found in the code of the page
• External links that link to the page

Google awards ranking for a page based on how often the keywords appear, how prominent they are on the page and the location of the keywords on the page.

Therefore, the more focused you are on a certain topic, the better you will rank, as Google will believe that you are an expert on the topic.

Let’s use an example

Let’s say you have a website focused on photography services in Wellington. Let's say a user performs a search using “photography wellington”. Google, at the time this article was written, lists 411,000 web pages that match this search term. That is 411,000 different websites that are relevant to this search term.

Google has a tough job to order this list to ensure the websites at the top are the most relevant and of the highest quality.

The top listings are websites of photographers based in Wellington. If we look further down the list we will see websites with less relevant content, for example photography equipment suppliers, etc..

Now we know how Google works...lets apply this knowledge to our website...

Does Google know about my website?

Now that we have a greater understanding for how the search engines work, we can turn our attention to finding our website on Google.

The quickest way to find out is to perform a 'site' search. You can do this by entering Site: [your website address] into Google as shown below:

If your website has been listed you will see a list of all the pages of your website that Google has stored in its cache.
Next you can find out which search terms your website is ranking for. The easiest way to do this is to check your Search keywords, traffic report. If you are a Zeald client, you will be able to find this report in the admin of your website under the "Reports" tab.

If other people have found their way to your website via these search terms, chances are your website is ranking well for them. Try a Google search using the search terms to see where your website is currently positioned.

What if my website is not listed?

If your website is not listed with Google, your search for the site will result in something like this:


This means that Google has not discovered your website yet, or has not completed the content crawling and storage process.

Tell Google about my new website

You need to ensure that Google knows about your website or connect your website to the rest of the internet so Google robots can find your website. You can do this by submitting your site to Google and/or generating inbound links to your website.

But I have already submitted a sitemap?

Once you have submitted your sitemap, there is usually a delay before which you can find your website on Google. This is because the robots still have to find their way to your website and complete the process, which can sometimes take up to 3 months. Unfortunately you can't rush Google but there are things you can do to speed up the process.

How do I speed up the process?

There are a few things that you can do to ensure that your website is found and the content crawled as soon as possible:

1. You need to ensure that you have submitted your website
2. Or that you have some inbound links to create a pathway for the robots to be able to access your website
3. To get your website instantly to the top of Google for targeted search terms, use Google’s advertising program, called Adwords.

How do I get my website to the top of the Google results for a keyword of my choice?

There are various techniques you can do to improve a web site's ranking in Google's organic search results for chosen or targeted keyword phrases. This process is known as Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) and is a large topic that requires another article.

>Stay tuned for our next article on how to optimise your website

Or... you can get your website to the top of Google for targeted search terms using Google’s advertising program, called Adwords. By setting up Google Adwords you can create a listing and choose search terms that will trigger your listing or advertisement. The good thing about Google Adwords is that you don’t pay unless someone actually clicks on your ad and visits your website.

You might pay as little as 5c per click, especially if it is your own business name, which will be less competitive.

>Learn more about Google Adwords

>Learn more about Search engine advertising

This post has been updated - May 2016.

Recommended reading prior to this blog post:
The importance of identifying the right keyword phrases for your website and how you can do it yourself.

So how does Google Adwords work?

When you did the keyword analysis as detailed in the link above, you would have ended up with a whole bunch of keyword phrases which are part of keyword segment groups. For each of these segments you will create an Adgroup. For each Adgroup, you will create an advert that Google will display when a user searches for any of the keywords within that keyword segment. If a user clicks on your ad, you will pay Google an amount that you specify.

The structure of a Google Adwords account

The structure of Google Adwords is made up by a campaign (which could be area specific like NZ or Australia). Under each campaign, you have an Adgroup (which is the keyword segment) and you will create an ad for each Adgroup, which will use the keyword phrases under that particular segment.

How does Google position your ads?

Google calculates your position in the paid search results based on two main things: Cost per click (CPC) and  Quality Score (QS). If there are no competitors for your keywords, you will pay the minimum cost of 5c per click and be at the top of the page. When you do have competition, you'll need to outbid them in order to gain placement. It's not always the highest bidder that wins however, and that is where QS comes in. A lot of how Google determines QS is kept secret (for obvious reasons), but we do know it takes into account factors such as landing page, ad relevance, click through rate, web design, historical statistics etc. Basically, Google will serve the highest quality ads to customers that are going to be most interested in the offering, even if it means they will make less money per click.

Make your ads and landing pages relevant to your keywords

If there is one thing that you should always keep in mind when setting up a Google Adwords campaign it's relevancy. It is very important that you make your ad and landing page highly relevant to your keywords. This is why we go through so much trouble to segment our keywords. With our 'Give a duck' example from this post, we determined a segment 'bath toy' which contains many phrases centered around the theme: 'bath toys', such as 'baby bath', 'bath for baby', 'bath toy', 'water toys', 'bath for kids', etc. So with this in mind we would create an ad using these keywords and we would also make sure that these search phrases were incorporated into our landing page so it all ties in together and makes sense for the user.

Create new campaign

Before you create a campaign you'll need to sign up to Google Adwords account. Simply follow the directions supplied by Google.

You can create campaigns to target customers who browse the Internet:

• from a specific geographic area
• using a specific language
• with a certain type of device like mobile phones/tablets

If you need to, you can set up different campaigns for targeting different geographic locations. For example, we might decide to sell rubber ducks to New Zealand and also Australia. We would create a separate campaign for each country and label them 'Rubber duck NZ' and 'Rubber duck Aus'. We can also create a campaigns specific to regions within a country like Auckland or Wellington. A photographer based in Wellington, for example, will likely target Wellington only. Keep in mind that it can be difficult to keep track of multiple campaigns, so make sure it is something you absolutely require.

Setting up your campaign on Google Adwords:

1. Name your campaign
2. Select the relevant location. This can be either entire country, a city or a radius from a certain point or an arbitrary shape that you can draw on the map.
3. Select the language.
4. Choose the device type (we generally recommend starting with all devices).
5. Choose a network. We recommend just the search network to begin with. You can always set up a new campaign to target the display network.
6. Select your bidding option (we generally recommend starting out with automatic bidding to maximise clicks).
7. Set your budget, which is the amount of dollars you want to spend per day. This means that if you have a budget of $200 per month you would divide by 30 to give you about $7 per day. We generally recommend that you start with at least $200 per month, but a maximum of $500 to a $1000 per month. This is a good start for testing purposes, but budget can be analysed after keyword research when CPC's have been defined.
8. Don't worry about advanced settings for now.
9. Click next.

 

Steps for setting up an Adgroup

1. Choose a keyword segment for your first Adgroup. We have decided to start with the segment 'bath toys'.
2. Review the top most popular search phrases to work out the keywords that you should use in your ad. Our top phrases include: 'bath for baby', 'bath toy', 'water toys', 'bath for kids', 'bath toys', and 'toys bath'. We would use phrase 'bath toy for baby' in our ad which includes most of the words from all our top phrases, especially the headline.
3. Write your headline.
4. Write each description line.
5. Set your display URL. Again use your target keywords or phrases that help to qualify the user. For example we used www.giveaduck.org/RubberDuck. Note this does not need to be the actual URL. It is there to give the user an idea of where they are going to be taken. It must also incorporate your domain (giveaduck.org).
6. Set your description URL. Find the most suitable landing page that the visitor is taken to when they click on your ad. Make it specific to your ad, make it relevant and ensure that it uses the target search phrases. Avoid sending people to your generic homepage.
7. Copy and paste all the keywords associated with the chosen segment from your research, into the keywords field.
8. Save your ad. Once you have set this up, the ad will be sent to a real person at Google for authorisation.

Set up an Ad

1. Use your most popular search phrases in your ads, especially the title of the ad. 
2. Check out what local competitors are doing and also look at what might be working globally. Try a google.co.uk search for the same keyword phrases and see what the ads look like.
3. Convey your unique selling proposition (USP) in your ads: 'Money to charity', 'Largest range', 'Good price', etc.
4. Add a call to action and it's always great to create a bit of urgency: 'Buy Now', 'Don't miss out', etc.
5. Add a compelling offer: 'Free delivery', 'Mothers day sale', 'Half price', etc.
6. Think about qualifying your customer. We don't want to incur the cost of people clicking on our ad if they are not interested in our offer. You need to make up an ad that compels quality clicks that result in a sale.
7. Include prices if possible;this is a great way to make sure that people that click on your ad are actually willing to pay the price. It's also a great way to convey discounts.
8. Split test multiple ads. This means for each Adgroup, create at least two ads with one or two elements that are different so you can find out what's working better. So you can choose to change the headline to see if that makes a difference or you can choose to change the offer in the ad to see what's perceived as more important. It will also allow you to test which ad clicks actually result in sales.
9. Avoid using competitor brand names.

 

Split test your ad

It is very important that you split test your ad. This means just changing one or two aspects of a Ad group to test out what's working better. It will allow you to test which offer is perceived as being more attractive and which ad click actually converts into a sale. Keep in mind an effective split test needs a large audience, so you may want to wait on this until you're getting a lot of interest in your ads.

Steps to create a split test

   

1. Create a new ad under the ad group. You can do this once you have saved your ad.
2. Avoid making too many changes to the ad - just change either the headline, or your offer or your USP.
3. In our case, we want test out our offer vs. the USP. So we are trialing out to see if users are more motivated to click an ad because of charity or because of free delivery.
4. Allow for an appropriate period of time to gain significant results before analysing the data and implementing changes.

Note that Google will start monitor your split tests and if one them is really under performing, it will cease to run that ad so as to make sure that your click rate is high.

Billing

We like to recommend that you use the Postpay billing option to ensure that your ads are running smoothly. Often a prepaid balance will run out and your ads will dry-up, meaning once your prepaid balance is out, you will have no click throughs. This means that you will start to lose traffic and more importantly you will lose important test data. It makes it difficult to test and tune your ads and your landing pages if you have big holes in your reports.

Postpay billing isn't a scary option either because you will have set your budget beforehand. There is no way Google will let your spend go over your budget. If you decide that you don't want to spend anymore money on Adwords, you can go in and cancel anytime you like.

Going Live

Your ads will not go live straight away because Google will need to review the ads to make sure that they pass their criteria. This will usually take around a day or so before your ad can go live.

 

We've tried to make this process as simple as possible but you can always get us to help you with it instead. Contact us to find out more.

If you've read our article on the importance of doing a keyword analysis, then you know identifying the right search phrases has a number of advantages. It is the most important step before setting up a Google Adwords campaign and helps in optimising your organic search engine ranking.

Before we get started...

In this article, we will take you through a simplified version of the process our Google Adwords specialists follow to find the right keywords and phrases. We encourage you to follow this process but please note that it is still complex; we've simplified it as much as possible without losing value. If you feel that the full process is too difficult to follow, you can still get started on the first couple of steps which will give you a good idea of what your customers are searching for on Google. Otherwise, you might be interested in some help from our Google certified experts, which includes a keyword analysis: contact us to find out more.

Tools for the job

We recommend that you use a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet or a similar package to follow this process, and you will need to have some proficiency to complete this process. You will also need access to the Google Adwords Keyword tool.

Step 1: Brainstorm seed keywords

Brainstorm all the phrases your customer could be typing into Google to find your business. Put yourself in the shoes of your customer and imagine yourself performing a Google search. What would you type into the search field to find a solution to your problem? This means starting with 'seed keywords' which is a certain topic or idea, and then thinking of a few search phrases under each seed. So for Zeald's 'Give a duck' website (which sells rubber ducks for charity), one seed might be 'rubber duck', another might be 'toy'.

• Think about the primary search phrases that describe your website or industry in general. For the rubber duck website we would use children's toys'.
• Make a big list of phrases. Think of every possible scenario including local searches like 'rubber duck nz'.
• Consider famous brands that you might also stock as part of your business, be careful to not use a competitor brand though.
• Also consider related themes like 'baby shower gift' that might have lower competition than 'childrens toy', but still has high traffic.
• Solve the problems of your target market.
• For large catalogues consider different product categories. For example, rubber duck is a small catalogue, but it might be just one category of a larger children's toys website.

Step 2: Segment the keywords

Group the phrases you have come up with into various themes, usually the 'seed' you start with can be the segment heading. The segments might be for different product groups that your company offers. Or they could be different target customer groups searching for your company's products and services in different ways. Consider different uses of the same product or different target customers or the same customer at different buying stages.

For a traditional website that does not have a large catalogue, you should have up to 5 different segments initially.  You will use these to optimise your homepage and the site in general.

A large catalogue website may have many more than 5 segments. For example an automotive parts website might have many different themes, such as brakes, windscreens, wheels, oil, cleaning products, etc. To begin with, you should focus on the general theme of the website which would be something like "auto products", or "car parts", etc. You can repeat this exercise later to research the different categories.

Step 3: Determine search volume

We can determine the volume of each of the search phrases you have brainstormed using Google's Adwords Keyword Tool. This tool also allows you to determine search volume of a phrase specific to New Zealand or other geographic locations.

1. Once you have setup a Google Adwords account and logged in, click on 'Reporting and Tools' in the menu bar and select 'Keyword Tool'.
   

2. Firstly change your geographical location to match your business. For 'Give a duck' this would be New Zealand. Click on 'Advanced Options' (next to United States and English) and choose the your desired location.

3. Now copy and paste your seed keywords, one segment at a time into the 'word or phrase' box and click 'search'. Google will come back with a big list of search phrases related to your seed word segment along with search volumes for each.

4. On the left hand menu, Set the 'Match type' to be 'Phrase'. Google will return the search results with quotes around the phrases which are the exact search phrases in the order that you typed into the box. It might have additions around it like adding 'buy'. This step will be very helpful later on when you start a PPC campaign.

5. Export the results to Excel using the 'download' button. Copy and paste the results into an Excel spread sheet (call the tab something like 'Primary keywords').

6. Keep the words in keyword groups by adding a new column at the start of the sheet and filling it with the segment title, in our case, 'rubber duck'. So every keyword should have the relevant segment heading next to it.

7. Repeat this for each segment and make sure that you run a separate keyword search for every different geographical location. Keep adding the search results back into the 'Primary Keywords' tab and write the name of the segment heading next to the words for each keyword.

Step 4 - Shortlist your words

We now need to shortlist the phrases into a more manageable number:

1. Tidy the spreadsheet

You can do this by removing unused columns, and leaving just the following columns:

• Global Monthly Searches
• Local Monthly Searches
• Estimated average CPC
• Advertiser competition
• Plus keyword phrases and segment headings of course

2. Shortlist by search volume

• Order by 'local search volume' or 'global search volume' depending on the location of your primary target market so that the most popular terms appear at the top. Use the Excel sort function for this operation.

• Delete all the rows which have 0 or low search volume, maybe 10% or 20% of your total search phrases depending on how many you have and how thorough you want to be with this process. The less phrases you have the quicker it will be but the greater the chance you could miss out on a golden opportunity.

3. Shortlist by relevancy

• Remove all duplicates. Because we have researched the popularity of each keyword segment separately with Google Adwords, there is bound to be some cross over. We need to remove this crossover. You can use the 'Remove duplicates' option under the 'Data' tab within Excel. Make sure that you choose the 'Keyword' column only.
• Work your way down each keyword/phrase and remove any rows that are obviously not relevant to your business. For example the phrase 'Toy story 3' is the name of a movie with a large number of page views and not really relevant to our business. Likewise with 'wooden toys'.
• Consider removing competitor brand names. It is not considered good practice to use competitor brand names. For example with the 'Give a duck' website we would remove the phrase 'Toys are us' because this is a competitor.
• Consider commercial intent. There is a tool available online which can give you a bit of guidance on commercial intent if you are not sure of a certain phrase yourself. Click on the 'query' button, type in the search phrase and click go. The result is a percentage so 'commercial intent of .29' indicates a commercial intent of 29% and 'non-commercial intent .29' indicates a commercial intent of 81%. Phrases with really low commercial intent can be removed as well.

This is a long and can be tedious task that requires a lot of concentration so have lots of caffeine on hand.

Once you are done re-order the spreadsheet based on the 'Group' first and then the 'local/global monthly searches' using the 'Sort & filter' function.

Pheeeew ! Well done!

If you have followed this whole process, well done! Now you have a comprehensive list of keywords grouped into relevant themes, and ordered by their popularity.

You should also have a sound understanding for the type of language that your target customers are using online.

You should have had many different insights and hopefully discovered some nice little opportunities.

What next?

Now you can setup a PPC (Google Adwords) campaign using these search phrases and the themes you have created will form your Adgroups. You can then craft your ad-creative using the search phrase from each group with the highest popularity as your headline.

If you've understood and implemented everything above, then well done! If you haven't managed to figure it out on your own, please don't hesitate to contact us for a free consultation.

Keywords are the words or phrases people type into search engines like Google to find products and services that might relate to your business.

Why is it important to do a keyword analysis for your business?

1. Doing a thorough keyword analysis means that you will be putting all your efforts and investment into getting your site to the top of Google rankings for search phrases that are relevant to your business. And for phrases that people are actually looking for in the biggest numbers. This will help send targeted quality traffic to your website.

2. Going through the process of identifying your keywords will also help you learn the language of your target customers. Too many businesses use jargon that they are familiar with, but their customers don't understand what that might mean. Speaking the same language as your customers can improve your conversion.

3. You can spend a lot of time, money and resources to obtain and hold a good ranking for a search phrase. If later down the track you realise that you didn't get the right search phrases, it can be difficult to change your target phrases. This is because part of ranking well in search engines involves getting links to your site from other credible sites. An important part of those links is the 'anchor text'. 'Anchor text' is the visual text on the page that links to a site. For example in this article, one of the anchor texts is 'Pay-Per-Click campaigns' (below). The anchor text should incorporate your target search phrases for a good Google ranking. It's difficult to change the anchor text on other websites, therefore finding the right keyword phrases will prevent this from happening.

4. Knowing the right keywords is the starting point to setting up effective Pay-Per-Click campaigns.

An example...

A pig hunter ran an online business selling pig hunting DVDs internationally. Doing a keyword analysis revealed that very few of his target customers actually referred to it as 'pig hunting'. His American customers referred to it as 'hog hunting'. His European customers referred to it as 'boar hunting' and only Australian and New Zealand customers called it 'pig hunting'.

A quick check on Google Insights can show this information:

So how do you go about finding the right keywords/search phrases for your business? Read our article on how to do a keyword analysis.