Google introduced Quality Score to determine in which position your Google AdWords PPC ads will be displayed, and how much you will pay for each click on those ads.

The Quality Score for each ad is determined by a number of factors:

- The relevance of your keyword to the ad content

- How relevant your keyword is to what a customer is searching for

- The quality of the landing page (reached when someone clicks on your ad) – is it relevant, transparent and easy-to-navigate?

- The speed at which your page loads – slow pages amp up the frustration factor and lower your Quality Score

- Your keyword’s past click-through rate (CTR): How often that keyword has led to clicks on your ad in the past

- Your display URL’s past CTR: How often you received clicks with your URL included in your ad

- How successful your account has been in the regions you’re targeting

- How well your ad’s been performing on similar sites (if you’re targeting the Display Network)

- How well your ads have been performing on different devices like desktops/laptops, mobile devices and tablets – your Quality Scores vary depending on the device

Why Relevance Matters

Suppose your customer is looking for black jeans. Your customer types “black jeans” into Google search, finds your ad about “black jeans”, clicks on your ad, and is taken to a webpage where she finds a variety of black jeans. That’s relevance: delivering to the searcher exactly what he or she is looking for. We also call that a great user experience, and that’s what helps to boost your Quality Score.

The Benefits of a Good Quality Score

You pay less per click – Ads containing keywords with a high Quality Score will have a lower cost-per-click than keywords with a low Quality Score. And that’s definitely a good thing.

Your ads receive higher rankings – When it comes to rankings, relevance is everything to Google. If Google deems your keywords and landing pages to be relevant, your PPC ads will be rewarded with a higher position at a lower cost per click in search results.

Your ads receive more clicks by highly targeted traffic – More clicks mean more conversions. If your ads are relevant and targeted to your ideal customers, they will bring better potential customers to your site.

So a good Quality Score means lower cost-per-click, higher rankings and more conversions. WIN WIN WIN!

Watch this Google video to learn more about quality score is, how it’s calculated, where it’s located and how to improve it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fZU3UA2Grlc

If your quality score is preventing your PPC success, we can help.  Contact our Google-certified PPC pro today.

At the end of the day, we’re all just people hoping to have a conversation. Communicating online shouldn’t be that different from communicating offline. Remember that these five rules still apply:

Rule #1: Don’t talk about yourself 24/7.

No one wants to hear everything about you all the time. It’s like being on a date with someone who talks about themselves the ENTIRE time. Don’t get me wrong, your customers like you. But if you never ask them for their thoughts or opinions – sooner than later, they will be asking for the cheque.

Rule #2: Keep me interested.

If you talk about things that I don’t care about, my attention span and my listening skills are going to be limited. Customers want to be involved and engaged on social media. Discover what interests them and deliver the goods.

Rule #3: Ask me questions.

This goes hand in hand with Rule #1. Asking questions is key to having and keeping a conversation going. Questions not only allow you to get more information but they also show that you’re taking an interest in what is being said. If you want to know what’s going on inside your customer’s mind, you have to ask them.

Rule #4: Listen to me.

This is probably the biggest challenge I still see with a lot of brands. Too often we see brands on social media sites that don’t address online complaints. Trust me, you don’t want to ignore the problem or delete the complaint. Often times, customers just want brands to acknowledge that they have a voice and want to be heard.

Rule #5: Get back to me

How long does it take for you to get back to someone? Someone important? An hour? A day? Your customer should be seen as a very important person and deserves to get a response from you in a reasonable amount of time.

It’s important to note that the way in which we communicate with each other is changing. But that doesn’t mean that we should forget how to talk. The lines of communication shouldn’t be between brand and consumer – it should be between one person and another.

Internet audiences are fast becoming mobile – but is your website audience part of the wave? You may be asking yourself if it’s time to consider a mobile website design for your site.

If the location of your business is important to your business, such as a restaurant or bar, a hotel or a real estate services company, the answer is, “What? You don’t have one!?” Mobile search is perfect for businesses where customers need your services in a specific area or they want to take action while on-the-go, such as to make a dinner reservation or book a room.

Adam Stephens of Residential Leasing Group Inc. says their mobile site is invaluable to their business. “Our mobile site means that our clients and colleagues have a very powerful tool that they can use in the field. Our Relocation colleagues can do full property searches with descriptions, hone in on the area that they are looking for and event navigate to specific properties via their maps software without ever having to go back to the office. This is a very big development for them as they are frequently with clients and have to react to changing circumstances constantly while orienting their clients to the city/community.”

How do I know my potential customers are searching for my site on a mobile device?

The best place to find out is to head over to your Google Analytics or a similar analytics program. Google Analytics tracks traffic coming from sources with different resolutions. When you log in, look under Overview -> Mobile and click on “devices.”

In fact, Google Analytics will tell you exactly which devices your visitors are using to find your site.  How cool is that?

If you use a different analytics program, it may not be so clear cut. You may have to look at the resolution sizes to know if your visitors are searching via a mobile device. For example, in the Apple family, look for these:

iPhone – 320 x 480

iPhone 4 – 640 x 960

iPad – 768 x 1024

Based on your overall traffic count, you can assess whether the portion of mobile searchers is big enough to warrant a mobile website for your business.

If you don’t think it’s time to create a mobile website for your business, but you want to have a mobile presence, then consider claiming your Google Places for Business page. Google Places listings are already optimized for mobile search, so your listing can act as a mini mobile site for your business. Just make sure you complete the listing by filling out all the available information so your prospects are getting the whole story of what you have to offer.

If you have questions about creating a mobile website or claiming and optimizing your Google Places listing, we can help. Give us a call.

Why? Because there are almost 1.2 billion mobile Web users in the world. * And here’s another important fact, 61% of customers who visit a mobile unfriendly site are likely to go to a competitor’s site.**

Little wonder that mobile website development and mobile marketing are top-of-mind for site owners these days. If you’re considering a mobile site, this post offers some tips on how to make a mobile website friendly and accessible to mobile device users.

Website content doesn’t fit on mobile websites

Look at all your website content and ask yourself, “What are the biggest reasons a mobile phone user would visit my site?” Maybe it’s to see a menu, reserve a room, find a store location, or call to view a property.

It is not likely that the first content they want to read is your company story, team bios or community involvement. When you determine what they’re really looking for, keep that content and discard the rest.

Boil your copy down to the bare bones

Now that you understand what your mobile users want from your mobile website, it’s time to chop even more. This is when clear, succinct copy really counts. Think billboard here. You have a very short time to grab attention. Use strong headlines, directive copy and graphics to communicate meaning whenever possible. This is not the forum for fluff.

Make it super easy for the mobile user to get around

Include clean, smart navigation in your mobile website design so the mobile user can get to the good stuff quickly and easily. Put the most important pages and calls-to-action like your phone number, social media sharing icons and and Search near the top, and tuck housekeeping items such as privacy policy in the footer.

Make links and buttons as large as possible so they are thumb-friendly. Human fingers and thumbs are not precise instruments. Nothing is more frustrating than hitting the wrong button and having to go back and try again.

Plain is better than pizzazz for mobile websites

Avoid JavaScript and Flash, and any other unnecessary moving parts. Not all mobile devices can support these technologies, so why chance it? Use plain HTML in your mobile website development and your mobile users will be eternally appreciative.

Make it drop dead simple for visitors to make contact

Include “Click to call” in your mobile site. The mobile user clicks on your phone number and in seconds your phone is ringing. Include drop down menus with enquiry options on email forms (general inquiry | I’m interested in a rental | I want to rent my home) to minimize the amount of keying required.

Use a redirect so they reach your mobile site automatically

A mobile site redirect is code that can automatically tell if visitors are conducting a mobile phone search and automatically sends them to your mobile site. You can give them the choice of going to your full site by including a link to it in the footer of your mobile site. But make it easy to return to your mobile site.

When you make your website mobile friendly, you’re not only increasing your web exposure, but you’re also showing mobile users that you care about their experience with your business. Those efforts will make a dramatic (and measurable) impact on your bottom line.

Are you ready to create a mobile website? We can help you broaden your web exposure to the mobile search world. Contact us today.

  *Mobi-thinking

**Karim Temsamani at IABALM 2012

There are a few different ways to tweet on Twitter:

Regular Post

When you type a message in the white box (Compose new tweet) and click “Tweet”, it will be seen by all the people who are following you. (“Followers”)

Reply

The next type of post is a reply, indicated by the @ symbol in front of a Twitter handle or name, e.g. @azuraweb (no spaces).

When you type in a regular message, people may reply to your post. You’ll see your Twitter name with the symbol @ before it when someone replies to your message.

You can respond to other people the same way. You simply type @ and then their user name directly after that. Or, you simply click “Reply” on the individual’s tweet. Then you can add your own comment to the tweet – making sure to stay within the 140 character limit. Note that replies are viewable by everyone who is following you or the other person you are replying to.

Direct Message

If you want to send a private message to someone that no one else can see, you can send a direct message.

Click on the person icon in the top right and select Direct messages from the drop down menu. You’ll see a pop up showing your direct message history. Click the New message button, highlighted below.

In the address box, type the name or username of the person you wish to send a message to. Tip: Make sure that user follows you. You can only send a direct message to your followers. Enter your message and click Send message.

You’ll receive messages from others on a special page of Twitter and be notified via e-mail when someone direct messages you.

ReTweet (or RT) a Tweet

What’s a Retweet?

A Retweet is someone else’s Tweet that you chose to share with all of your followers. You can manually Retweet content by copying and pasting it into a new Tweet of your own, or you can use Twitter’s built-in Retweet feature.

How to Retweet without adding your own commentary:

1. Hover over a Tweet you wish to Retweet.
2. Click the Retweet link.
3. Twitter adds an “RT” in front of the Twitter username, and the Tweet is shared with all of your followers.

How to Retweet and add your own comments (RT):

1. Highlight and copy (right click on your mouse) the content of the Tweet you’d like to share. Add the Tweet’s original author’s name and the letters “RT” to show that it’s a retweet and isn’t your own content.
2. Add your comment at the beginning of the message.
3. Click “Tweet” to post the message.

How to get your own Tweets Retweeted

Do not use all 140 characters – Remember you only have 140 characters for a Tweet. You want to grab the interest of prospective visitors, but you also want to give others a chance to add their own thoughts to yours. If you leave them some room, this helps your cause.

Some people suggest that adding “Please RT” to your Tweet increases your chances of being Retweeted. But it does use up extra characters, and if your Tweet is valuable, it should happen naturally without adding your plea for RT.

Hashtags – what the heck are they?

Using hashtags on Twitter is a great way to target your tweets to a relevant audience but also to an audience that is often actively searching for your topics. Hashtags are often used to create discussion around an event such as a workshop or an event that affects a wider audience such as a government election or the Olympics or Climate Change. It can be anything really.

A hashtag is identified by the # sign in front of it. For example: #AlbertaElection. A hashtag makes a certain word, phrase or topic easily searchable. Know that you don’t have to hashtag everything. Hashtag etiquette is still evolving, so let good social manners be your guide. It is a rare “tweet” that deserves a hashtag, so tag only those updates that you feel will add significant value to the conversation. One hashtag is best, two are acceptable, but three hashtags is overkill.

Some Trending Topics will include hashtags, thus making it easier for users to tap into a Twitter-wide conversation regarding a single matter of interest.

I hope you find these basic Twitter posting tips helpful. Did I miss anything? Just let me know in the comments below.

If there’s an unusually high amount of reviews, chances are pretty good that they are not real. It’s easy to tell. Go to your competitor’s Google Places page and scroll down to Reviews. Click on a reviewer’s name.

You should see something like this.

Now let’s look at this person’s page of reviews. Someone was doing a lot of moving across Canada in one day!

Obviously this person was hired to add reviews to the Google Places pages of these moving companies. But instead of implementing strategies to obtain real reviews from real customers, this hired hand opted to create false Google Reviews.

If you want more Google Reviews, just ask!

The best way to add Google Reviews to your Google Places page is to ask for them. If you’re doing a good job of taking care of your customers, they’ll have plenty of complementary and honest things to say about your business.

That Schnitzel Place hands out business cards encouraging customers to give them a review. At the time of writing, That Schnitzel Place had 3 reviews on their Google Places page, 16 on Urban Spoon and 5 on Yelp. Not too shabby.

And if you’re worried about your customers saying bad things about you, don’t be. As hard as you try, you can’t please everyone all of the time. And if a customer had a bad experience, wouldn’t you want to know so you can address it? Isn’t that what you would do if they walked up to your customer service counter with a complaint?

As with everything on the web, including Google Reviews, it’s always best to “keep it real.”

It’s a valid question.

Many people don’t realize that these are two separate, distinct services. They may even be provided by different companies. Without getting all technical on you, here are the basic differences between the two:

Domain Registration – The address of your website

Your domain or URL (www.yoursite.com) is the specific location on the Internet where web users can find your website. It is like having an address for your home so visitors know where to find you. Think of the URL extensions such as .com, .ca, and .org as Street, Boulevard, or Avenue.

A domain registrar, such as GoDaddy, will “host” your domain name. When web users enter your domain into a search engine, the domain registrar will forward visitors to the place where your actual website resides – the web host.

Web Hosting – The place where you keep all your “stuff”

Your website is made up of several files. You must have disk space and bandwidth to store these files. A web host provides this service. When your domain host sends people to your website, they are visiting your site at your web host.

So …if your domain is like the address of your home, your web host is like the framing of your house. The files of your website are your furniture and decor.

Hopefully this helps to explain the difference between domain registration and website hosting.

If you have any geeky questions that are keeping you up at night, get in touch with us, and we’ll do our best to demystify things for you.

One half of all local searches are performed on a mobile phone.

Let’s say a potential customer is out shopping with a friend and it’s time for lunch. Said customer pulls out her smart phone and searches for “indian restaurants in Calgary”. The Google Places listings for Indian restaurants nearby appear. (What’s a Google Places listing?)

She selects a restaurant, reads the reviews from other customers, and takes note of the fact that the listing also has a 2 for 1 coupon. She decides to find out if a table is available. She taps the phone number on the listing and is instantly connected to the restaurant.

She taps the map button, and the phone displays a map with a pin showing the business location. Meanwhile, the built–in GPS offers travel directions.

When she and her friend arrive at the restaurant, she shows the waiter the coupon on her mobile phone, and they enjoy an excellent lunch at a great price.

That’s the power of local mobile search. And it can work for any local business, whether yours is a gas station, dental office, retail store, or yoga studio. But it doesn’t just happen on its own. You have to claim and optimize your Google Places listing to harness this power and bring customers to your door.

Head over to Google Places to claim your listing today! If you want to supercharge your Google Places listing to get ahead of your competitors and attract more customers to your local business, get in touch with us. We have a solid track record of helping clients rise above their competitors with the amazing Google Places tool.

Invariably when we launch a new site, we get this question. The answer is usually that it takes time for the engines to crawl a new site, to index it and to start recommending it to searchers. We ask our client to be patient, it will happen. And, usually, it does.

Two weeks ago we completed a new site and handed it over to our client’s hosting company to launch. Bing and Yahoo picked it up within days. Google appeared to be taking its time…a long time….

Upon further exploration, we learned that our client had two unique web sites, and that his hosting company had launched them both – with duplicate content. His site was penalized – rendered invisible to Google!

Duplicate content occurs when you have one or more URLs or web addresses, and each of them has a website with the exact same content.

Why would you have more than one URL for the same company? Let’s say while shopping for a domain, you come across other domains that are also suitable. You think, “I want to own them all so my competitors don’t get them.” So you buy them up. Now what?

You could just park them. Or if you want to use them, you have to add content to each of them. Writing content for one site is hard enough. What will you do for the other(s)? The easiest thing to do is use the same content for all your sites, right? Easy, maybe – but, as our client discovered, the consequences could be devastating.

Why is duplicate content a bad thing according to Google?

Google considers duplicate content to be spamming or an attempt at manipulating the search engines – even if that wasn’t your intent.

This is in direct violation of Google’s quality guidelines, which state: In the rare cases in which Google perceives that duplicate content may be shown with intent to manipulate our rankings and deceive our users, we’ll also make appropriate adjustments in the indexing and ranking of the sites involved. As a result, the ranking of the site may suffer, or the site might be removed entirely from the Google index, in which case it will no longer appear in search results.

If you want to know more, this article by SEO Moz covers the topic of duplicate content in depth.

What should you do to avoid the wrath of Google?

Only one URL can be the main address, and all others must “point” to it. The most common way to handle this is with a 301 redirect, but there are several other solutions depending on your unique situation. Your web development company or a reputable hosting company would be able to make recommendations on how to properly set up your multiple URLs.

It’s important to note that doing this after the fact may not fix the problem. You can submit a plea to Google, but unfortunately there are no guarantees.

A happy ending!

Even though the issue of duplicate content with our client’s websites was created by the hosting company, Azura Marketing took steps to rectify the situation. We asked the hosting company to remove the second offending website, and submitted an appeal to Google. Fortunately, within a week’s time, our client’s site was indexed by Google and is now recognized for targeted keyphrases!

If your site is not ranking and you’re concerned that it may have been penalized by the engines for some reason, get in touch with us. We’ll perform a site audit to uncover any issues, like duplicate content, that are preventing your site’s success, and if necessary, submit a plea to Google on your behalf.

I made a few strategic changes to my page, and shot up to the #1 position in LinkedIn for” SEO writer”!

Follow me to the hot spots for your keyphrase in LinkedIn:

Your LinkedIn professional headline, Current and Past sections.

(Your professional headline on your LinkedIn profile is under your name. To edit Current and Past, scroll down to Experience and click Edit next to the positions you want to change.)

Summary and Specialties

Skills

BONUS TIP:

In the Websites section of your LinkedIn profile, the defaults are My Company, My Website, My Blog. You can customize these to be the actual names of your company, website and blog. Here’s how: Click Edit. Choose “Other” and type in the text you want.

And while you’re at it, you can add your keyphrase for good measure!

Try these simple tricks and let us know if they worked for you! And if you need help setting up and optimizing your LinkedIn profile page, give us a call.

There’s more good stuff where this came from.

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*Work The Web