Tag: Tips

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SEO – Is It Worth the Trouble?

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McCord Web Services is one of the few Google Partners in the Fredericksburg, Virginia area.

Is SEO or search engine optimization worth the time and trouble today? With Google seemingly to be changing all the rules and more competitors moving into your own marketing landscape, it may seem like a losing proposition, but… there are smart things you can do that DO payoff for placement.

What are the smart things that any small to medium sized business can do to improve organic search placement?

  1. Make sure you have unique content and work hard to make your website experience different from others in your vertical (business classification).
  2. Make sure you are blogging regularly – at least once a week. If you are not a good writer, invest in finding a firm that you can trust that will create great linkable and sharable content.
  3. Make sure you have unique Meta Title and Meta Description tags for all pages in your website.
  4. Claim and authenticate your website in the Google and Bing Search Consoles. You’ll get information that will help you do a better job and understand what Google and Bing think about your site so you can improve.
  5. Implement Google Analytics. You cannot improve your own website if you do not know how visitors are using it. Got a low bounce rate? Pat yourself on the back and find out what people seem to like about the page with in-page analytics. Don’t have many visitors? Get the truth and then drive traffic there with Google AdWords.
  6. Get a full SEO evaluation and roadmap on where you are and how to get to the next level personalized based on your own statistical information.

You can still succeed and garner search engine placement with optimization, but be smart and savvy about the tactics that are used. Don’t buy into link building, link farms, and guest blogging on off-topic sites. Think mainstream, great content, and excellent user experience.

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How to Solve an Email Spam Problem on Your Android Phone

A Bright Idea that Tames Smartphone Email Spam
A Bright Idea that Tames Smartphone Email Spam

I have many email accounts for my business and each one has a certain use. One is tied to client blogs, one is tied to my AdWords pro center and all my AdWords clients, one is purely for personal use, and others are for certain business sectors. So when I access email on my smartphone I have had a serious email spam problem.

At first, I tried a subscription to SpamDrain. But, I found that my personal email could never be viewed on my smartphone for some weird connection issue. I could see an email for 2 seconds and it would disappear. Also sometimes emails that were really important were caught in the SpamDrain filter and I had to go daily to look to be sure I had gotten my mail; very annoying and problematic to say the least. I just felt that there had to be a better way to control the spam on my phone and be able to have full access to my email.

I have found a solution that is free that is now working for me and may be the solution for you – the Outlook.com unified inbox!

What I did to solve my problem, was to set up a free Outlook.com email address and then link all my email addresses to that one account. I even forwarded my GMail account there after a filter to block out the Google+ communication “spam”. Now, even for POP3 accounts, I can press and hold an email and add the address or domain to my phone’s own spam filter controlling what I see the next time around.

I have to say I have gone from unmanageable levels of email down to reasonable and emails that I want to see. This one little change has tamed my own smartphone email issue. I know that Microsoft has purchased Accompli, which I have tried before and liked, which is very similar to Inbox for GMail. So I look for even more productivity from my unified Outlook.com inbox in the very near future.

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AdWords Auction Insights – Daily Budget

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Not getting the performance you want out of AdWords?

Not only is your maximum cost per click a factor in deciding if you are in the Google AdWords auction, but your daily budget may be a factor keeping you out of the auction too!

It is important to understand a few things first about how the AdWords auction works.

AdWords account managers will talk about your 30 day budget spend;  it needs to be high enough to support your accounts daily budget based on your maximum cost per click. Not your average cost per click, but your maximum cost per click.

Here is a fine example of a client who by having a low 30 day click spend has effectively kept Google AdWords from being able to serve his account for best performance.

30 day click spend $150
Daily budget $5
Typical max. CPC for other clients in the same industry $6.50 His top maximum CPC based on his daily budget $5

As his maximum CPC is constrained by his daily budget, his account can never be set at a level to truly be in the auction, he gets spotty click results and sometimes Google cannot even spend his $150 in a 30 day period.

In scenarios like this, what we see happening is that an account manager gets desperate and starts adding broad match keywords to an account in an effort to get low cost traffic.

Here are some of the results we then see when that happens:

30 day number of impressions 11,930
Clicks in 30 days 36
CTR in 30 days .30%
Average position 6.8

It looks like the account is performing, but look at the impressions. They are high and the CTR is low. This account is getting clicks, but they are typically poor quality and untargeted clicks because the client has set the daily budget too low and so can never raise the maximum cost per click to get in the keyword auction. Google may even be delivering clicks at off hours setting the account up for even lower levels of success.

This is just one example of problematic account performance. In some cases as you monitor clients such as this you will even see Google saving up money to try to serve their program by even going a day or three without any clicks at all and then getting a few clicks a day or so later.

If you are looking for a savvy AdWords manager I invite you to read our client reviews. We resolve AdWords problems all the time and do work in some cases on an hourly basis to help re-mediate AdWords problems.

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Get 100 GB of Cloud Storage Free From Microsoft OneDrive

Thanks Microsoft and Bing. I love the new 100 GB of cloud storage!
Thanks Microsoft and Bing. I love the new 100 GB of cloud storage!

I love OneDrive and use it to communicate, manage, and share files with my off-site employees. I have been using OneDrive for years and was excited to find that by signing up for Bing Rewards, Microsoft will give me 100 GB of OneDrive cloud storage for two years for free!

Originally, when this promotion was announced it was only available to US users, but Microsoft has now expanded the offering globally.

To get the extra storage, you’ll first need a Microsoft account. Then head to Bing Rewards and sign up. After sign up you will click the link below the form to grab your free additional storage for One Drive. Then head to OneDrive and get the suite of apps.

I have to say that this is actually a pretty great deal. As I store work folders and files for my employees to sync with their computers in OneDrive, this is a really nice additional bonus for my team.

Bing will apply awards to your Bing Rewards account when you do searches on Bing.com. Awards come in the way of gift cards, sweepstakes entries and even donations to charities.

Microsoft and Bing.com have been moving very quietly in the background to reinvent themselves and this is just one of the new perks you can get by simply taking a look and checking them out. You are not forced to use Bing as your search engine, just enticed with some nice benefits on the side.