Google – Page 20 – The Web Authority

July 13, 2015July 11, 2015

Google Local Guides Impacts Your Online Reviews

Nancy McCord – explains Google Local Guides.

Quietly this past spring. Google rolled out a new program called Local Guides. Not only did Google create a program to make a community out of people already active in their social space, but is providing perks, mentoring, and recognition for those that participate by writing reviews.

The benefit to Google is that it gets huge numbers of local business-specific, high quality reviews written by real people who have actually used the service or bought from the business. By creating its own reviewer network, Google builds a community that it can manage to boost what it wants to enhance its own relevancy in the local space. And it can use the reviews the way it wants.

Here’s one example of how Google is benefiting. Google asked all Local Guides to Level Up in March. By encouraging Local Guides that are Google+ Community Followers and offering personal encouragement, badges when you hit a certain number of reviews, and special recognition within its private global as well as local communities, it has crowdsourced business review writing in an incredibly smart and savvy way. I for one, boosted my review numbers to hit 50 – leveling up.

If you write 50 reviews and you get a special badge that appears next to your own reviews. Write 200+ reviews and you may get invites to special events, and even an occasional Google branded gift. Plus you get bragging rights.

As a Local Guide myself, I actually like the program and am using it as a way to share my local knowledge as well as to connect with other writers in my own community. I happen to think that this was an incredibly smart move on Google’s part to enlist a grassroots movement building it’s own review network that it will be able to use for AdWords and for its own search results needs.

There is cache associated with being a Local Guide and for now I am having fun with the program. If you are over 18, you can apply to be a Local Guide too. Just visit this page.

Remember Local Guides are not hired or paid by Google, nor are they Google employees. They are just helping to write about what they know and letting Google have the rights to their work.

July 1, 2015June 26, 2015

Mobile as an Important Aspect of Your AdWords Strategy

Save money by allocating it in AdWords where it works best for you.

Showing your Google AdWords ads on mobile is an important part of your overall Google AdWords strategy, but how much should you spend in mobile for best results?

For all new AdWords programs, I recommend the following plan to determine just how important mobile is for your overall strategy.

1. Start out at the same bid for mobile that you spend for tablets and desktops, but watch over the next weeks to month where that puts you in regards to average page position.

2. If you are in position two to three, keep your bid where it is unless you start to see stronger conversion activity in the mobile space.

3. If your conversions are strong in mobile move your bid up by adding a positive bid adjustment for mobile from the settings > devices tag. Move slowly and test your account, but let your adjustments run long enough to have good statistical data – like 30 days.

4. For location specific businesses like doctors, dentists, lawyers, and other similar professions mobile may be your single most important space for conversions. For many of the accounts we manage now mobile accounts for all lead conversions. But consider your demographics! For areas where you will have younger customers, mobile will be stronger. For areas where your customers will be older desktops will be stronger. If there is an immediacy with a search such as animal ER mobile will own your conversion numbers.

Looking for a PPC manager in Fredericksburg or Spotsylvania, Virginia? We arrive in town on July 28th and our offices open on August 3, 2015.

June 29, 2015June 26, 2015

Google Says Mobile is a Key Micro Moment

Google Partner Badge — McCord Web Services is a Google Partner.

I recently attended a Google Partner seminar online on Mobile Tracking and Reporting for Google AdWords. There were some interesting nuggets that the Google Staff shared with us from the extensive research that Google has done on mobile and its value in the conversion funnel.

Here are a few nuggets I want to share today on mobile’s importance in the funnel:

1. Keyword search queries used on mobile searches will be shorter and more general.

2. Mobile activity accounts for strong pre-conversion research.

3. Mobile activity is about looking to be inspired and typically the user is not ready to convert, at least not just yet.

4. Mobile sessions as part of the conversion funnel are typically done early in the day (before noon) with conversions taking place later in the day and typically on a desktop or tablet.

5. Due to mobile activity Google states that desktop pageviews and time on the site are lower, but in reality much of this activity has just simply moved to a mobile device. You may still be getting the same activity from users, but now it is difficult to see in Google Analytics as it happens from multiple devices.

6. Google is strongly recommending advertisers to use cross device conversions as a part of their conversion metric by enabling this as a column detail to better understand how users are converting across multiple devices. Although these are estimated numbers, Google feels that they have a 99.9% surety.

If you watch your numbers in Google Analytics, it is not unusual to see typical website numbers such as 1.1 minutes on the site versus previous numbers last year of 2 to 3 minutes on the site. It is not uncommon to see pageviews down from a year ago of 2 to 5 pages down to 1.2 pages per session. It seems to me that Google has “nailed” what has happened on the web. Don’t discount mobile to your business and marketing equation. Although you may not be getting conversions, you are getting micro moments that lead to sales. Cut out the mobile portion and your sales will very possibly suffer.

Looking for a savvy AdWords account manager for your Fredericksburg PPC program? Check out McCord Web Services – your Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania, Virginia Google Partner.