Google’s policy changes, what do they mean for you?

For awhile it’s been known that Google was about to consolidate its privacy policies into one large, all encompassing policy. On 1st March 2012 these changes went into effect.

In a nutshell, what do the changes mean?

Basically it means that Google will now share the data it stores for you between all their services. They won’t be sharing anything new with outside parties; just among Google’s many services. Google has been adamant these changes are only being made to make their products better than ever and display even more relevant content and advertising to each personal user.

Alma Whitten, Google's Director of Privacy, wrote in a blog post recently

“As you use our products one thing will be clear: it's the same Google experience that you're used to, with the same controls," "And because we're making these changes, over time we'll be able to improve our products in ways that help our users get the most from the web."

Alma outlined out 3 important points to keep in mind regarding these changes.

• Google’s Privacy Policy is now much easier to understand.
• Google’s Privacy Policy will enable them to build a better, more intuitive user experience across Google for signed-in users.
• Google’s privacy controls aren't changing.

Pablo Chavez, Google’s Director of Public Policy also discussed in a January post five things that aren't changing.

• Google will still keep your private information private -- they're not changing the visibility of any information you have stored with Google.
• Google will still allow you to do searches, watch videos on YouTube, get driving directions on Google Maps, and perform other tasks without signing into a Google Account.
• Google are still offering you choice and control through privacy tools like Google Dashboard and Ads Preferences Manager that help you understand and manage your data.
• Google still won't sell your personal information to advertisers.
• Google are still offering data liberation if you'd prefer to close your Google Account and take your data elsewhere.

It must be said that Google did a fantastic job on trying to usher this in quietly. They hammered home that these changes are being made to simplify things. For most people this is good enough to satisfy them. The average person on the street might not know (or care) but there is no question that many people are concerned. The changes have drawn the attention of many privacy watchdogs. The Japanese and EU governments have also expressed concerns. A member the FairSearch Coalition (which made up of Google competitors), sent a letter to the National Association of Attorneys General expressing concerns with the changes.

Privacy issues around Google's past are only fuelling the fire of controversy and adding strength to claims this is a huge deal. Stuff-ups like the recent story around Safari and the launch of Google Buzz a couple years ago have tended to stick in people's heads.

But despite the warnings will the changes really affect you? Is it really as big an issue as some media are suggesting?

What you need to know

Google is not collecting more information, just using it in a different way.

There is a huge misconception that Google will suddenly have access to information it didn't have before. That is incorrect. In reality Google have always collected your data for all of its services. They've been using that data to personalize your experience already, and isn’t it a great service?

All that changes now is that data collected from your activity across their services, say between YouTube and Google Search, will be used to provide a further personalized experience across all of their products.

You will be tracked. No matter what you do.

Up to today many tech experts have suggested you should clear your Google Web History to increase your privacy. But it's become clear now that this is not going to stop Google from collecting your personal data. You can clear and stop the tracking of your activity, but you’ll only prevent Google using that collected data with your Google account, it won’t stop Google from tracking your web activity. Your searches will still be followed and stored on their servers, even if you're not signed in. The information can still be used to build a profile about you will allow Google to sell ads that are specifically tailored to you.

Is it really a big deal?

Some privacy experts are outraged while others exclaim, "Who Cares?" Both are right.

A lot think that this isn't a big deal, Google is collecting the same information that it always has and it’s just being used now to improve the users' experience. Who cares if the data is used for advertisements? You will always see ads, but now the advertisements will be closer to your interests. Google need to make money from advertisements, so from my point of view they might as well be accurate.

On the other hand, privacy experts and lawmakers are up in arms about the policy. It is a grey area as The United States has very few laws about the collection, use, and distribution of user’s data.

The US Government has proposed a consumers ‘privacy bill of rights’ that will protect people, allowing them to decide what information is collected about them, and how this information is used. But as it stands no current laws can stop Google's unified privacy policy.

Can I do anything?

Well you can just stop using Google's services :) Good luck, in today’s world this will be almost impossible!

You can however, follow some simple tips to minimize how much data is collected about you, such as performing searches on Google without signing in.

]]> Tue, 09 Oct 2012 03:58:08 GMT http://www.onlineexpression.co.nz/googles-policy-changes-what-do-they-mean-for-you http://www.onlineexpression.co.nz/how-does-fresh-content-help-your-seo {loadposition articles-breadcrumbs}

How does fresh content help your SEO?

Does having fresh content on your website help your natural search rankings (SEO)? I have been asked this question a lot lately so I thought I would write a blog post to discuss the many benefits of having fresh content on your website.

Not just fresh content, fresh relevant content!!

First of all it's important to make the distinction that search engines aren't just looking for fresh content; they are looking for fresh relevant content. There's no point in adding fresh content to your website just for the sake of it, this won't help at all. For example; if you have a website for a car yard, add content talking about cars and the auto industry; don't stray off topic and talk about your favorite recipe. Keep all the content you write very focused so the search engines will see a common theme through your website.

More content = more keywords!!

When you publish new content, you present more opportunities for your website to contain relevant keywords. Adding relevant content to your site should mean that your content will be full of important keywords that you would like to rank higher in with search engines. The search engines will scan these keywords on your website and deem you to be a more relevant search result for those keyword search terms. But be careful not to cram keywords into your article! You must write your article in a way that is readable and makes sense for your customers as well as for search engines. Be mindful of the keywords you want to use, but write as naturally as possible. There are no shortcuts here, create good relevant content, the search engines will know when you're not.

Fresh content results in regular indexing

Adding fresh content will tell the search engines that they need to crawl your website more often, which is a good thing. If the search engines see no content changes on your site they will crawl less often knowing that there is probably nothing new to see. But if when they come back each time there is something new then they will increase the rate they crawl your website to make sure they find new content as soon as possible. Having fresh content will also give a sign to users as well as search engines that there is some life in the website and that there will be someone to moderate inquiries and process orders. A great way of adding fresh content to your website is to add customer reviews. No matter what industry you’re in, feedback from customers or clients is always important and can be a fantastic source of positive promotional content. As often as possible try to get kind words or testimonials from your customers and get them up on your website.

Search Engines Love Frequent Updates

If you are going for top rankings in natural search results you can only win the content game if you can produce it on a regular basis. Writing one new article every few months is not going to do it for you. It can be difficult to keep coming up with new topics to talk about that your audience is going to find interesting and relevant. If you find yourself struggling to come up with new content you should remember that it doesn’t have to be anything too comprehensive; sometimes content that is short and sweet is the best way to go. Creating content that is short and to the point will also help you keep on top of your schedule of sharing fresh content with your audience, think relevancy and frequency.

]]> Tue, 09 Oct 2012 03:57:30 GMT http://www.onlineexpression.co.nz/how-does-fresh-content-help-your-seo http://www.onlineexpression.co.nz/joomla-platform {loadposition articles-breadcrumbs}

Joomla Platform

Joomla is an absolutely superb web development platform. The Joomla platform is installed on your web hosting server and from there you can develop your website using the Joomla platform.

Most businesses fail to pay attention to which web development platform is best for them, but they should. Joomla!, WordPress, Drupal and many other platforms make it easy for businesses to have a great, functional web site that they can manage themselves. But there are differences and it’s important to know about the technology and the choices available. Have a consultation with a web design expert and they will help you make the right choice.

Why is it important?

The type of platform you use is important not only to have a great website, but it’s a foundation for any good marketing plan. It can provide you with a wide range of functions and can help improve things like internal workflow to ecommerce.

Is Joomla “better” than WordPress or are both about the same?

At Online Expression we obviously think the Joomla platform is a great system that provides a solid content management system. We think it’s amazing that both WordPress and Joomla are open source communities, which will ultimately benefit you, the end user.

The Joomla platform combines the ease of use and extensibility to meet the needs of a broad spectrum of users. We believe it’s an ideal platform for small businesses. Another fantastic feature of the Joomla platform is its focus on security, a high priority made by the Joomla team.

Contact us today to see if the Joomla platform is right for your business.

]]> Tue, 09 Oct 2012 04:07:45 GMT http://www.onlineexpression.co.nz/joomla-platform http://www.onlineexpression.co.nz/seo-and-ppc-what-are-they {loadposition articles-breadcrumbs}

SEO and PPC, what are they?

We've been getting asked a lot lately about Search Engine Marketing and getting some really blank stares when using the terms SEO or PPC. Broadly speaking Search Engine Marketing can be broken down in 2 main parts which are Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Pay Per Click Marketing (PPC). In this article we will be explaining in very simple terms what each of these mean and how they can benefit your website and ultimately your business.

Let’s start with SEO...

Search Engine Optimization is the process of improving a websites natural search engine ranking in the "natural" or "organic" search results. The higher a website ranks on search result pages the more visitors it will receive to the website, which is why it is so important and powerful.

What are the natural/organic search engine results?

When you perform a search on Google you will see a page of search results. At the top of the page and down the right hand side you will usually see Paid Search Ads, these will say ‘Ads’ next to them, these are PPC Search Results. All the other results you see on the page are Organic Search Results. ‘Organic’ means that the Search Engines themselves determined what results should be shown here. When these links are clicked on they won't cost the owner of the website anything.

To undertake SEO for your website is to try and do the things that Google and the other Search Engines like so that they will rank you higher. I will write a separate article about this at a later date but in a nutshell these are;

Having fresh content on your website

Search engines love fresh content, when they scan your website they like to see that new content has been added.

Having relevant content

In order to rank higher for a particular search term Search Engines want to see content relevant to this keyword on your website. If they see your website providing lots of content about a particular topic then they will see you as an authority on the topic and push you up the search ranking for related keywords.

Having good SEO structure to your website

There are lots of things that make it easier for search engines to scan your website such as correct URL structure, H1 tags, alt image tags, good website layout, strong page titles etc. Having all of these in place will improve your chances of rising in the search results.

Getting back links

Getting other websites to link back to your website is a powerful way to make the search engines see you as an authoritative website. But beware, not all back-links are equal! You need to get links from other websites who have similar content to your website e.g. if you are a builder you will get more benefit from 1 back link from another building website than 100 back links from cooking websites.

Ok so what is PPC?

Pay Per Click is an advertising model used to direct traffic to websites where the advertiser pays for each click. Google, Yahoo and Facebook all provide PPC advertising models.

With Google and Yahoo you can choose to display your ads in their search results or in their content networks which are websites that have allowed space on their websites to them to display ads (when someone clicks on the ad Google/Yahoo will charge the advertiser for the click and then pay a percentage to the website who displayed the ad).

PPC gives you far more control than SEO in terms of where your ads will display. You can define the location where you would like to display your ads, a daily budget and also the keyword terms that you would like your ads to show against. You can also pause or resume your campaigns whenever you like.

The most commonly used form of PPC is using Google’s Adwords program to display ads across their search engine. You submit a keyword list to Google to let them know all the search terms that you would like to show your ads against and your ads will be displayed at the top of these search result pages and also down the right hand side of the page.

With Adwords you choose how much you would like to pay per click and then Google will determine where your ad will sit compared to your competitors. Your ad position is called Ad Rank.

Google’s method for working out Ad Rank is not as straight forward as just using your bid. Ad Rank is worked out using the following algorithm.

Ad Rank = Max Bid x Quality Score

Quality score is super important to your ads position and in a lot of cases people are paying less per click to sit above their competitors ads because they have a superiorquality score.

What is a Quality Score?

Quality score is applied to each keyword your bidding on and is made up of a wide range of things such as;

• Making sure the keyword is part of a well structured Adwords campaign.
• Having ad text that’s relevant to the keyword.
• Making sure the webpage you are sending people to is relevant to the search term your bidding on.
• Improving the Click Through Rate of the keyword by having good negative keyword lists.

Creating strong Quality Score’s across your keywords is something we focus on when managing your campaigns to make sure that you are paying as little per click as possible.

Our opinion is best to start with PPC and then look to SEO to expand upon your advertising efforts and gain more traffic. In this way you can use Adwords to access the traffic levels of certain keywords, determine how well they are performing for you and decide which keywords to target for SEO.

Also with PPC you can get instant results and decide whether online advertising is right for your business, where as SEO takes a lot longer to see results and you can end up spending a lot of time and investment before you have even found out how well your website will turn visitors into enquiries.

If you would like to know more about how Online Advertising can help your business please contact us today for a free consultation.

]]> Sun, 11 Nov 2012 23:41:38 GMT http://www.onlineexpression.co.nz/seo-and-ppc-what-are-they http://www.onlineexpression.co.nz/what-is-adwords-quality-score-and-why-does-it-matter {loadposition articles-breadcrumbs}

What is AdWords Quality Score and why does it matter?

Lately I have been explaining to some of my customers how Google works out the position for each ad shown in its search results. There is a common misconception that it is only your maximum bid that will affect your position. This article will explain exactly how your Ad Rank is worked out and why Quality Score is so important.

How is your Ads Position worked out?

Google works out where each ad will sit based on something they call the Ad Rank.

Ad Rank is worked out using the following formula;

Ad Rank = Max. CPC x Quality Score

Ad Rank is measured by multiplying the maximum bid that has been set for a particular keyword (Max CPC) by the Quality Score of that keyword.

You can quickly see with this formula that maintaining good Quality Scores is essential to keeping your spend down and making sure that you aren't being over charged for your clicks.

What is Quality Score?

By Google’s definition “Quality Score is calculated in the AdWords system for each of your keywords. It looks at a variety of factors to measure how relevant your keyword is to your ad text and to a user's search query. A keyword's Quality Score updates frequently and is closely related to its performance. In general, a high Quality Score means that your keyword will trigger ads in a higher position and at a lower cost-per-click (CPC).”

In a nutshell this means that the higher your Quality Score, the lower you will pay per click and the better position your ad will be shown in. Maintaining good Quality Scores across your account is hugely important and will save you money.

How do you improve your Quality Score?

Each of your keywords will be assigned a Quality Score from Google. This will be a ranking from 1-10 with 10 being the best. These scores are updated frequently.
Theoretically anything less than 10 has room for improvement, but it is widely accepted and has also been indicated by Google itself that Quality Scores of less than 5 can be treated as low scores, while scores of 7 or higher are good Quality Scores.

One thing Google will do to work out your Quality Score Google is look at the landing page that your ad is sending people to. You can optimize your landing pages for this by doing the same things needed to improve your SEO rankings (you can read more about this in my previous article; http://www.onlineexpression.co.nz/seo-and-ppc-what-are-they).

However Google doesn’t just look at your landing page to determine your Quality Score, there is a lot more to it than that. The Relevancy of your ads to your keywords as well as they way that you setup your AdWords campaign initially are both very important to your Quality Score. The aim is to have tight groups of keywords that are all closely related to each other. By doing this you can have Ad Text for each group that is precise and closely related to the group of keywords.

The best way to maintain good Quality Scores across your AdWords campaign is by regularly optimizing your account. This entails making sure that each of your ad groups contain descriptive ads; that each keyword in the ad group closely relates to the ads; that negative keywords are regularly added and new keywords are explored and added.

We can help you…

Maintaining an efficient AdWords campaign can be very time consuming and requires a lot of learning. If you're like most business owners and you’re too busy to bother with this let us take care of it for you.

Starting from $100 per month Online Expression have monthly AdWords maintenance plans that are focused on improving your Quality Scores and ensuring that you aren’t being over paid for your clicks.

Call us today on 0508ONLINE for more information.

]]> Sun, 11 Nov 2012 23:39:49 GMT http://www.onlineexpression.co.nz/what-is-adwords-quality-score-and-why-does-it-matter http://www.onlineexpression.co.nz/measure-your-adwords-profitability-with-roi-tracking {loadposition articles-breadcrumbs}

Measure your AdWords profitability with ROI tracking

It’s been said that online advertising is the most cost effective way for businesses to attract new customers. But can such a claim be measured?

The answer is yes it can. One of the strong advantages of AdWords when compared to traditional forms of advertising is that results can easily be tracked and measured. Advertisers not only have the ability to track their campaigns clicks and impressions, but they can also track the conversions of visitors to their website. While impressions, clicks, CTR and costs are all very important components to the success of an AdWords campaign, tracking conversions allows you to measure the Return on Investment (ROI), which can provide great insight into the profitability of your campaign.

What is ROI?

ROI is the measure of how much profit you've made from your ads compared to how much you've spent on those ads. Return on investment measures the ratio of your profits to your advertising costs.

When using AdWords you can track and measure your ROI. By knowing your ROI you'll be sure that the money you're spending on AdWords advertising is turning into healthy profits for your business and provides a solid figure to benchmark against.

Using conversions to measure ROI

By using conversion tracking data from either your AdWords campaign or your Analytics account you can use conversions to measure your ROI.

Conversions track actions that you want your customers to take on your website after clicking your ad; such as making a purchase, a sign-up, a download, viewing a key webpage or making an enquiry.

Once you've started to measure conversions, you can begin to evaluate your ROI. The value of each conversion should be greater than the amount you spent to get the conversion. For example, if you spend $10 on clicks to get a sale, and receive $15 for that sale, you've made money and received a good return on your AdWords investment.

To estimate the ROI of your campaign take the revenue that resulted from your ads, subtract your advertising costs and then divide by your total advertising costs.

(Revenue - Cost) / Cost = ROI

To turn this into a percentage multiply by 100

(Revenue - Cost) / Cost * 100 = ROI%

Why ROI matters

By calculating your ROI, you’ll learn how much money you've made by advertising with AdWords. We can use ROI to help you decide how to spend your budget. For example, if you find that a certain keyword is generating a higher ROI than others, we can apply more of your budget to the successful keyword and less to the ones that aren't performing as well. We can also use the information to try to improve the performance of your less successful keywords.

Calculating your ROI

Determining your AdWords ROI can be a very straightforward process if your goal is to generate sales directly from your website. You'll already have your advertising costs for a specific time period and can measure that directly against the sales generated in that period.

But if you're interested in calculating the ROI for a page view or lead it can be a bit more difficult. You'll have to estimate the value of each of these actions;

• How many conversions does it take for you to generate a business lead?
• How many business leads does it take for you to generate a sale/signup?
• How much value/profit on average do I make from a sale/signup?

Here is an example of someone arriving at their ROI;

A Yellow Pages ad for your business may cost $1000 per year and result in 100 leads. Ten of those leads become customers, and each customer provides an average revenue of $120. The value of each lead is $12 ($1200 revenue/100 leads), and your ROI for the Yellow Pages ad is 20% ($1200 revenue minus $1000 spent)/$1000 advertising cost) x 100.

Track your return-on-investment (ROI)

When you invest money in an AdWords campaign, you expect to earn back that amount and more. It's important that you understand what you can gain from the money you spend on advertising. The bottom line for any AdWords campaign is how much value it generates compared to its cost.

If you work out the value of each conversion, this value can be applied to your AdWords account and the ROI will automatically be worked out for each keyword, ad group and campaign.

Call 0508 665 463 now to find out how AdWords advertising can boost your business

]]> Sun, 11 Nov 2012 23:39:19 GMT http://www.onlineexpression.co.nz/measure-your-adwords-profitability-with-roi-tracking