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Top Tips for Adwords Landing Pages
If you are creating landing pages that need to be optimized for the use of Google AdWords campaigns, there are some things you may want to take in consideration so you can maximize on the benefits that using Google AdWords provides. You may or may not know that even though you create a campaign using Google AdWords, the actual program scans your target page for relevancy. Once it’s finished scanning your page, it gives your page a quality or relevancy score. For this reason, building a landing page that will take advantage of the ‘relevancy score’ is vital.
These are our top tips for creating an AdWords landing page that will maximize your relevancy as well as being AdWord friendly.
1.) The file or page name should be the same as the keyword: When saving your page you’ll want to make sure the page name uses the keyword as well. This will ensure you maximize on AdWords ability to target the keyword not only in the domain but the page name too. If you are using WordPress, this is nice and easy as your page title is usually the page name as well.
2.) In-page title should also be the keyword: The title of your page should also reflect the keyword as well. This will allow the AdWords bot to recognize the domain, page name, and page title as all having the keyword, making it all relevant.
3.) Meta tag keyword placement: For some of you that use blogs this may be difficult if you’re unsure how to edit your landing page but the fact remains, your landing page should contain Meta tags. You will have keyword Meta tags that you’ll use for adding the main keyword. This will also be applied to the description Meta tags as well. All of these tags will need to be optimized using the main keyword(s) to ensure maximum exposure.
4.) The heading tag must utilize the main keyword: The heading tag will need to incorporate the keyword because Google AdWords recognizes this tag as well as the others.
5.) Maximizing your page content: For everything to come together nicely on your landing page you will need to make sure your content is relevant, as well as maximizing your keywords with at least 2-3% keyword density. Don’t just put a bunch of key words and phrases at the bottom of the page, Google will penalise your page if you do, instead, ensure you have good quality copy written for the page that includes the key phrases you are trying to target.
6.) Do not use links to products on different domains: If you are using an AdWords campaign, do not use you landing page for anything other than your own services or products.
7.) Make sure you have no broken codes: Google AdWords recognizes broken codes and this will leave you out in the cold. Your page quality will score very poorly and regardless of the work you’ve done your landing page will not receive maximum exposure.
8.) Original content: Your landing page should always have original content and not something that has been used everywhere else on the internet. Have an article writer create unique content maximizing your keywords.
9.) Test your page: Test your page before going live to make sure everything is as it should be. This will ensure you receive maximum results for the work that has been performed.
With these ten tips for creating an AdWords landing page you will be able to maximize your landing pages potential and draw in relevant visitors using your Google AdWords campaign.
Google Panda – What you need to know.
The Google Panda update is really a game changer when it comes to search as well as website position. The last time search engines updated their own search algorithm that much was in 2007 with the Google Florida update, which reduced links as well as PageRank as well as re-arranged the search engine results for a large number of websites. This time around it’s absolutely no different.
Google’s update is really a clear effort to improve the actual organic search engine results by degrading the present spam websites which dirty them. To do, this it’s upgraded its algorithm to consider specific ‘signature’ components which right now mark a website which contains spam content material.
By knowing what the actual characteristics of the spam website are in the perspective from the Google internet search engine you may reverse-engineer it and start to understand what you ought to do to be able to stop your site from becoming adversely suffering from the Panda new update.
What Search engines Considers now to become ‘Spam’ Web sites
1. Websites along with content that isn’t sufficiently unique – it doesn’t matter if your articles are item descriptions (which is actually iterated often across the actual web) or you’re reporting a thing that has happened and may therefore not really have a lot of freedom by using it. Google now really wants to see authority meaning originality is actually key.
2. Websites that are keyword crammed and that are a little outdated in their own content additionally flag Google’s brand new filter with regard to spam web sites.
3. Scraped content material or content that has been introduced from additional websites is actually of specific risk because Google right now values creativity above the majority of content under consideration. This penalizes, for instance, the eCommerce websites with item descriptions that repeat specs posted on countless other websites. Also, it penalizes those who have been focusing on a little budget to obtain in just as much content as you possibly can by purchasing it through Content Plantation websites.
4. Websites that have poor navigability as well as a high desertion rate, all proved through Google’s unknown gathering known as Click Thru Rates (CTRs) will even feel the actual might from the Panda sledge hammer.
If your site has any of these no-no’s, you are likely to be tripping Google’s flags and can probably observe declining visitors. If you’ve got a combination of a number of these types of issues turning up on your site you will need to start thinking of how to proceed about it and just start doing the work.
The greatest message from the Google Panda revision is that if you are not ready to take quick, actionable learning to make your web site appear stable and associated with value towards the web, Google will pretend it is invisible thereby making it so. In other words, take your time and allow in your budget for your business’ website to be as full of quality content as possible. This will ensure that your rankings stay at the level that you require for your business’ stability.
Business Email
Email is a critical part of running most small businesses these days, but we are still finding business owners who aren’t aware of the benefits of setting up their email professionally.
The first mistake small businesses make is using the free email address that is provided as part of their broadband internet subscription. In many cases, this will be an @bigpond.com or similar address. Business owners should setup email accounts using a domain name they own (like shiftsolutions.com.au), to give a more professional appearance, and also so that they retain full control of the business email; Locking yourself into using your ISP for email means you will never be able to change your internet provider, which over the years could cost you thousands in higher fees or lost productivity.
Another common mistake for very small businesses is to use one address for the entire business, even when there are more than one member of staff. Even if you only advertise one address to begin with, enabling each team member to have their own, seperate email account provides greater productivity, as each team member can be responsible for their own emails. Worse, it’s often the case that the way the email is setup is such that every team member receives the same emails, so you have the problem of multiple members of the team working on the same email, thus wasting time.
Small business owners should setup generic email addresses, such as sales@ or info@, and when communicating to people outside the business, those generic email addresses should be the ones you give out; This enables you to direct those emails to different team members, as people leave and are replaced in your business, or when they take holidays and someone else needs to handle the email.
Another issue that is often overlooked is the size of the mailbox most ISP’s give you; Generally, 20 Meg is the limit, which for normal use is more than enough, but many business clients like to get their email on their computer and their phone, and this often requires a larger mailbox to store the email for longer periods of time; With your own domain hosted email, you can control how big your mailbox needs to be, but with ISP email, you have no say.
Finally, for mobile team members, or those with iPhone / iPad devices, consider a hosted exchange service; This service puts your email “in the cloud”, but with a full Microsoft Exchange Server to handle it, which enables things like calendar sharing, a great help to small business owners. It also means when you read an email on one device, it will show up as read on every device, because instead of copies of your email being saved to each device seperately, there is just the single copy, on your Exchange server. (Larger businesses with a small business server get Exchange as part of the deal)
Using email to the full will bring your small business productivity gains and make the job of running your business that much easier.
Password security
Recently this story appeared in the courier mail, focused on the woman how lost a weeks wages to online thieves.
Before I tell you how you should be setting your passwords, I’d draw attention to this quote from the victim;
“It was definitely a shock – the fact that someone was pretending to be me and could log into something that’s supposed to be secure.”
What needs to be clearly understood, is that services like Internet banking and paypal are only as secure at the person who’s using them. You need to use these services properly to avoid this happening to you,
Here are the key tips for staying secure online;
Use a different password for each website or service you sign up for
Make your passwords at least 8 characters long, 12 for banking and finance sites
Include letters, numbers and symbols in your passwords
Make sure your password is totally random gibberish
Where available, get a security token for your account
Ensure you have good quality and updated anti virus software on your computer
Follow these simple tips and your money should stay safe.
Proposals for your clients
I had a great lesson reinforced for me today by one of our suppliers. Central to the theme is how you present the work you propose to your customers, and how easily it can go wrong.
Put simply, you should give your customer a detailed proposal, which explains the work you intend to do for them, and the total cost of that work. I won’t go into detail here, as this isn’t really a business blog, but I’m sure you get the idea.
If you are going to offer your customer options that vary in price, it should be a simple matter to spell each option out, and show the price of each.
Most importantly, the details of what you will provide, how long it will take to complete the work, and what the work will cost, should all be presented to your customer in a SINGLE DOCUMENT.
This is where one of our suppliers fell short this week;
- They listed the price for only one of two options
- The price was not on the same document as the options
- They didn’t clearly explain it would take some days after our order before the work could be done
- They didn’t clearly explain we needed to sign off on the work on their official form.
Most or all of this information WAS provided, but because it was provided in a haphazard way, some in email, some in a document, some by phone, the message was lost in the hustle and bustle of running a business.
The moral of the story; make it easy to do business with you, and you will win more business.
Dangers of Dropbox
Recently we had a case where a client phoned us in a panic, as all of their important documents had simply vanished. They had stored all their data within Dropbox, so that they could sync the documents between their home and work computers.
Lots of people take advantage of Dropbox for this reason, it’s a great way to keep your stuff on multiple computers. There are dangers though, and you should be aware of them;
The main danger is putting your own dropbox onto a computer you do not have complete control over, such as a computer where you work. If you don’t completely control that computer, with a password only YOU know, then someone else has the opportunity to delete files from your dropbox. If they do, dropbox will dutifully DELETE THEM FROM YOUR OTHER COMPUTERS, and they are gone.
The second issue, is that if you use the same dropbox account on all your computers, the computers you don’t have control of will include a copy of everything. So if you have a work folder, and a personal folder, for example, then your personal stuff will be on your work computer.
If you don’t want your boss to be able to find your application letters for a new job, for example, the solution is to setup more than one dropbox account. Just setup a dummy account for the work computer, and share your work dropbox folder with that account, but not the rest of them. That way, work is work, and they can’t mess with your personal stuff.
Make sure, whatever you do, that you have a real backup solution as well. Dropbox is NOT a backup, and should never be used as such. Because it will mirror deletions across all your machines, it doesn’t provide protection against accidental deletion. A good backup solution DOES do this, and a whole lot more.
Another mistake is to put files such as your MYOB file into your dropbox. This seems like great idea, but the problem is that each time you use MYOB, you are making small changes in the file, that Dropbox will then have to update. If you are a regular user of MYOB, this will generate a lot of traffic, and many people have very low bandwidth caps on their internet plan, and this could put you over.
We’d love to hear your comments about your experiences with Dropbox. Let us know in the comments!
MYOB & Emailing Invoices / Statements
Today I tweeted in frustration the MYOB Team (@myobteam) that I am still, after a number of years of complaining, finding that MYOB cannot produce a proper PDF copy of Invoice and Statement forms. I was fed up, having complained about this any number of times, and never had any resolution from MYOB.
I have had several clients complain of the same thing. We have a lot of small business clients using MYOB, and so are quick to hear when things aren’t right. This problem has plagued both our own business, and many of our clients, over many versions of MYOB.
Today, my prayers were answered. MYOB were quick to get back to me, and for the first time that I have complained of this issue, they actually offered solutions. To ice the cake, their advice actually worked!
Where you find that your logo or other graphics you’ve included on the form do not come out on the PDF, you need to install Apple Quicktime [Download] (yeah, that baffles me too, but there you go). I tested it, and sure enough, our logo started appearing on the PDF versions of our documents.
We have also seen issues where specific fields on forms simply don’t appear on the PDF version, but do on the print version. The MYOB team responded that this is usually caused by the text in the field being slightly too big, so you have to make sure your number fields are both wide enough for the biggest number you might see and also tall enough, which turned out the be the problem in our case.
Now that we know what the problem is, at least we can deliver the fix, so if you can’t get your forms to email correctly from MYOB, give us a call!
Why your new website should run on WordPress
Are you considering having a website created from scratch but don’t have any idea on how to make one? Why not install WordPress on your web hosting server, instead? WordPress is an open source blogging platform which can also be converted into a website for free. Multiple business owners and bloggers alike are already using WordPress because of its exceptional flexibility and functionality.
Compared to the traditional web site creation, WordPress has big advantage because of its numerous plugins and themes. With the plugins and themes, your website can be customized according to your needs. All plugins are designed with specific purpose. One of the most popular plugin is called Akismet, which purpose is to protect your site against spammers. Some of these plugins are available free of charge but you can also hire a developer to create unique plugin that is customized according to the functionalities that you need.
There are also numerous themes which you can use to make the website’s appearance more appealing to its visitors. Same with the plugins, themes are also available either for free or for a minimal cost, but you can also ask a web designer to tweak the existing theme according to your specifications. However, there’s more to WordPress than just website customization. Below are some of the advantages of using WordPress as a Content Management System tool.
Ease of Use
WordPress is very easy to setup especially if Fantastico is present in the cPanel of your hosting account. If Fantastico is not available, you can still install WordPress into your web hosting account manually by uploading the core files via FTP.
Hassle-Free Updates
Updates and upgrades can be easily done by clicking a link. Everytime a new update is available, a message on the administration panel will appear to inform the site’s administrator about its existence.
Open-Source CMS
Anyone who has experience in PHP language can work within the codex to modify certain operations and functions. A developer can visit wordpress.org to view the CMS documentation to help him go through the codex, themes and plugins modifications with minimal effort.
Virtual Assistant Friendly
Updating the website’s content can easily be done through outsourcing. You can give a VA his own username and password to input the necessary file to update content to the site without worrying that he might mess up the entire site.
Learning to build a website using WordPress is a bit challenging and fun at the same time especially for the newbies. And today is the best time to start learning the skill.
We can help!
The hard part of building a website is, well, building it! Once you have a great wordpress website design implemented, all you need to worry about it adding the content, and thats super easy! Give us a call and find out how we can do all the hard work for you, and get your business humming with a new wordpress website today!
New wave of malware infection
We are getting a lot of calls this morning about malware infections on peoples computers; So far they are all different infections, but it’s rather strange to get such a spate of them all at once, leading us to believe a new exploit has been found and is being actively exploited ahead of Microsoft fixing it.
All the clients we have seen infected this morning have been using Internet Explorer, so we strongly recommend everyone go to getfirefox.com and switch to Firefox, so as to help avoid these kinds of expensive problems.
Guest posting on other sites.
Getting backlinks to your site is one of the most powerful ways to build your online presence and improve sales. The problem most people face is just not knowing where to start to get more of this online marketing gold. Here’s one great idea;
Writing an article for another website is a great way to get an instant high quality backlink to your website. There are plenty of sites that publish stories regularly, and plenty more blogs run by individuals who would be happy for some extra fresh and original content they can use on their site.
Look for sites that do not compete with yours, but where your product or service overlaps with the topic of the site; For example, a lot of products and services would not compete with a builder, but would be of interest to the builders client base, and have some relevance for people building a new home.
Once you’ve found a prospective site, decide on what sort of article you could write for them. Make sure you are an authority on the subject, because they aren’t going to want a poorly written article for their site. You don’t even need to write it yet, but you could write a few of these, and then offer them to sites. I tend to look for the site opportunity first, though.
Then, contact the site owner and make the offer. Be to the point, don’t try to make out you are offering free content because you are a great person, tell them you thought you could offer content their visitors would appreciate, and you are looking to gain a link back to your site from theirs. At this point, consider if they could offer YOU some content too; There are many products and services that overlap in both directions, and doing an article swap is even better!
Once you have agreement, try and incorporate one or two links in the article itself, using anchor text that describes your product or service. This is the best kind of backlink you can get, one that tells Google not only that your site is worth a visit, but exactly what your site is about.
One important point; You are going to need to write a fresh article for every site that takes you up on your offer. Giving multiple sites the same copy will result in those sites being penalised by Google, and most likely, they’ll take your content down.
Let us know how you go in the comments!
