What Are You Doing to Wean Yourself Off Pay Per Click?

Puzzle pieces
We put the pieces together for you to build great, sharable content.

Have you been grumping about your pay per click bill? Do you look at the unpaid listings on Google.com and dream about appearing in the top ten results?

If you are only spending your marketing dollars on Google AdWords and not investing in building great content for your website by using an on-domain blog then you are never going to wean yourself off pay per click advertising.

You can get organic search activity, social shares, and build natural links when you regularly write blog posts on your website. Google and Bing love that you are keeping your content fresh and that you are building slow, natural links. The first page a new visitor sees may just be a blog post which then leads them into your website. You may even build your e-newsletter subscriber base from great blog content.

More site owners are moving away from blogging and moving into pay per click advertising forgetting that although pay per click has an immediate return, blogging and content building have a place in a long term marketing strategy that builds value for search engines and enhances prospect engagement as well as keeping readers on your website longer.

If you are thinking about blogging, I invite you to read samples of posts we have written to see if now may be the time for you to start posting again on your blog. Our capable blog writers and knowledgeable oversight makes the creation of sharable content easy.

Google Local Guides Impacts Your Online Reviews

Nancy McCord
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.

Mobile as an Important Aspect of Your AdWords Strategy

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

 

Why Google+ Still Matters

Image of a Google Maps exposure on Google.com.
Image of Google My Business Listings on Google.com.

Google+ is not just another social media site like Facebook or Twitter. It is a Google owned property that Google loves and promotes heavily in its own user experience.

If you say you just don’t “get” Google+ let me explain why you should have a presence.

1. It is owned by Google. If Google created it and promotes it heavily in the search results showing updates within the search listings and has now tied it to your Business Local Page it is important.

2. Don’t fight Google, embrace what Google says they consider important. Sometimes outside of Google, we don’t know the long term strategy that Google is taking on a product. What I do know is that Google continues to consider Google+ much more than a social media platform.

3. Google has built the Local Guides program and the Google My Business platform all around Google+ and Google+ Local pages. Add to that AdWords Express which is tightly integrated into Google+ and you will start to see that Google is really very serious about Google+.

4. Leverage Google+ for your search exposure. For those of us who “get” Google+ we are leveraging it for Google.com exposure. I use my personal and business accounts widely and drive traffic to the communities I moderate at Google+. By doing so I build followers to my Google+ account leveraging the ability for my own Google+ posts to appear in the search results of those in my circles. That alone is one of the most powerful ways to boost exposure with Google+ and Google.

If you are ready to embrace the world of Google and Google+, I invite you to first read what we do for Google+ services and then get with us to discuss your needs and to create a special plan for promoting you and your business on Google.