How We Ended up Doing Video Verification

A long-term client of ours has grown significantly (with our help) over the past several years. It was time for them to move to a significantly larger building that could provide appropriate space for their equipment and employees. So we went to complete what we thought would be a fairly simple address change in the Google My Business dashboard. That is where simple stopped.

No Postcard – No Other Options

In the past we’d been able to work with clients and complete address changes with something as simple as a phone call verification after changing the address. More commonly over the past few years, a move required a postcard to be sent by Google to the new address. That is the only option we got this time and had no reason to be concerned. We initiated the postcard mailing, informed the client to be on the lookout for it and let us know when they received it. Two weeks later, no postcard.

Mail gets lost. Employees miss the importance of the card and throw it out. Stuff happens. So Google has a nice feature to resend the postcard, which you expect will arrive in 5 days. More than 2 weeks later, no second postcard and no other options when you click the button to choose an alternate verification method.

Google My Business Support to the Rescue

It was time to call in help, in the form of Google My Business Support. Google has made this pretty simple because all we had to do was click a couple buttons telling them the postcard had not arrived in more than two weeks and fill out a form. We asked for a call back, but actually ended up interacting a bit through email. Here are a few things to have ready if you want to request support.

• Photos of your business/vehicles
• Some basic account information
• a link to the street view of your business address on Google Maps
• a link to your My Business listing (there are instructions to find this in the form)

The Video Verification Process

We received a response from support within a couple hours asking for a few more details. After providing those, support proposed this new method for verifying the business location, which requires being at the location. While it would be a little much to be there in person to complete a verification for some clients, this one happens to be less than 10 minutes drive from us. So being a new experience, we wanted to be there to learn about it and support the client in getting through the process. It is a good thing we were too, because this is easily the most extensive verification system being used.

Get Ready to Show Them A Lot

Video verification requires a scheduled call and connection through Google Hangouts. We were told that the Google representative would want to see a few things:

• An employee
• A business card
• Exterior signage of the building
• Possibly public spaces in the building
• Possibly a vehicle used in service calls

We have it in writing that this video is only for verification purposes, if you are concerned about it getting posted on your My Business Page (we were). So we were reasonably prepared at the time of the verification call, but it was still a wild experience. The Google representative called the business line and after verifying address details connected to us through the Hangouts app. The rest of the verification was sort of like a scavenger hunt. They have a checklist that they go through.

The Expected

A number of things went as expected with the video call. We were asked to show an employee (or in this case the business owner), the exterior signs. Since there was a sign on the building and on the door, they wanted to see both. They also wanted to see a vehicle and its license plate, which they had informed us about.

The Unexpected

You won’t see the Google representative on Hangouts, even though they can see you. This is a little odd, but does make sense. It was just unexpected when dealing with a two-way video call application.

The whole process probably would have gone smoother if it had been conducted primarily though Hangouts. It makes sense to make contact through the listed business number, but then things got messy because we were talking to the rep on a wired desk phone, while trying to show her things outside with video. Eventually, she switched to talking over Hangouts, and that made it much simpler to walk around and show her what she needed to see. If you have to go through a similar experience, you may want to suggest switching to Hangouts audio before trying to show them your building (if they don’t do this automatically).

They wanted a street view of the building. Not sure why, but this was a brand new building and the last drive by from a Google car mapping the area was in 2013 when the land was an open field.

They wanted us to start the vehicle. This was a surprise. And the only reasons we can think of are pretty unlikely to happen, like using a stolen or towed vehicle to fake the verification.

They took stills of the business card. We had to hold the camera steady and get a close up on both sides of the business card while they took screen captures. They probably also took screen captures, rather than recording the video of the other key things they requested to see as well.

Why Video Verification?

It makes sense to use a more strict verification method if a business cannot receive a postcard. Without it, you could easily fake a new location with very little effort. In this case, we believe the reason the postcard wasn’t arriving was probably on Google’s end. This was a brand new building, so while the U.S. Post Office will start delivering mail quickly, verification systems used by other mailers may take a while to be updated. Our best guess is that the postcard never got sent because of an address verification issue.

For Google, the problem of location spam is very real. Call center companies somehow verify business locations in your town and use a fake location (vacant building, etc) to make it look like a local business. These happen everywhere, including Fort Mill. Photo verification isn’t always enough because it is too easy to fake with good Photoshop skills. There have also been multiple cases of fake suite numbers being used in real buildings. If you want to read a very detailed explanation of the problem, The New York Times has a great article from 2016, explaining the problem with fake locksmiths.

Photo verification isn’t nearly as simple as waiting for a postcard to arrive and typing in a code from it, but it is a lot more likely to result in accurate business listings. Expect to see more enhanced verification techniques like this in the future.

The post Our Experience with Video Verification for Google My Business appeared first on The Mayoros Agency.

One of the more frequent questions we get from current clients or friends is about phone calls they receive regarding their online listings. There are multiple variations of these calls, but the bottom line is that Google is NOT calling your business to help you update your Google My Business listing, warning you about changes that could result in your listing being dropped, or offering to sell you a specific slot on a search results page.

We hate these calls as much as you do, because these dishonest “companies” that are involved in this continue to make it hard for legitimate companies to sell our Internet-related services to clients.

Misleading Calls

The most recent version of these calls started popping up on our radar in 2018, but only because that is when they first started calling us. The call is from an actual person, although they usually click into the call after you are already about to hang up due to whatever delay is caused by their calling software. They have identified themselves as map support or even Google map support. One of these callers asked if we were open on Saturday because that is what they found from a Google search. Except that our listing clearly shows that we are closed weekends. If you say you want to fix the problem, they transfer you to the “map support specialist.”

Various callers identifying themselves as “map support” have given us different answers. One said they were a franchise of Google’s in Irvine, California. Others will admit they do not actually work for Google if asked. When asked about their company website, we’ve been told everything from Google.com to being provided with non-existent urls.

Robot Calls

These are pretty pesky, as you can receive several of these each week. The most common one we receive here, or are asked about, is the recorded voice asking you to “Press 1 to update your Google listing now.” There have been some variations on this message over time, including dire warnings about how your business listing might be dropped from the web, etc. The newest one is a recording that says you have been “flagged for a verification” trying to fool you into thinking you need to press 1 to verify your listing. Whatever you do, don’t press 1.

Directly from Google – “Google does not place robocalls”.

Claiming to Have Open Slots on Google

Then there are the calls telling you that your business has been selected because there is an open slot on the first page of Google waiting for you. Occasionally, these too are robot calls, but more commonly there is actually a deceptive person on the other end of the line. They’ll suggest you can have a front-page slot for your local area and that this opportunity is limited. Hang Up.

Directly from Google – “Google never guarantees top placement in search results or AdWords”

Free Websites, Charges for Map, My Business or Search Listings

Another variation that is out there, but less frequently used is the call asking you to claim your free business website, or trying to charge you for creating a my business listing or getting your website listed in Google. Google doesn’t charge for business listings, map listings or indexing your website. Google does have some free website services available, but they won’t call you about it.

Legitimate companies like ours will help you claim and manage your Google business listings, but we won’t be sneaky about what we are doing or why.

Tactics Often Taken by These Callers

Some colleagues have made a hobby out of talking to these callers and trying to figure out either what company they work for or what they are trying to charge for what are generally free services. Commonly reported tactics or one’s that we have experienced ourselves, include:

1. Outright lying and saying they work at Google.
2. Misleading statements that they work for Google.
3. Statements such as “Google Specialist” that make you think they work for Google.
4. Telling you that your listing will be deleted if you don’t pay.

Most of the callers are misleading, rather than outright lying. They’ll say they work “on behalf of” or “for” Google. Interpreted into plain English, both of these statements are really sneaky ways of saying that they are providing Google with something as part of what they are doing. Generally, this boils down to them “helping” Google keep their business listings updated.

Tips for Handling these Calls

It is pretty hard to block the calls, so the best solution is generally to make sure everyone at your business is aware that these are not calls you want to take.

1. Hang Up
2. Consider Complaining to the FTC

3. Use Google’s form to report them to Google

Footnote- Google Might Call You

Oh, by the way. There is a really small chance that someone at Google or a partner agency really might call you. They did have a legitimately hired telemarketing company calling about AdWords Express a few years ago and they’ve also been known to do some spot checks of Business listings.

If you call or request a call back through a customer service form, then they will also likely call you and it may come from an unusual number.

IF you see this number on your caller ID – 1 (650) 253-2000, you are actually getting a call from Google. There are also two companies that work as contractors for Google that are involved in AdWords. They are Infinity Contact and TTEC. Employees of these companies may legitimately have @google.com email addresses.

If you call or request a call back through a customer service form, then they will also likely call you and it may come from an unusual number.

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An SEO Audit is a way to look at your website and check the technical aspects, content and off-site health of your company’s website. This is more in-depth and consultant based than a free SEO scan that some companies offer as bait to talk you into a long-term contract. All comprehensive SEO Audits should include information about these three areas.

Technical Review

The technical SEO part of the audit reviews a lot of technical parts of the website. Are you using the right tags and markup on your pages? Do you have a site map that Google can read. Is your robots.txt file blocking some important parts of your site from being indexed? These are important items that require a solid technical knowledge of websites and how search engines index them. The technical part of one of our SEO audits includes over 70 individual items on a checklist that we use to determine technical soundness of a site. The technical side is very important because it is what helps make sure that the search engines can find and understand the content on your site. If your site has serious technical problems…like we once found where the designer had marked the site to not be indexed by Google, then it doesn’t matter if you have the best content or user experience.

User Experience and Content Review

Comprehensive site reviews should include information about the content you have on your site. Do you have videos, a blog, answers to questions prospective customers may want to know, and more. Are your pages short word count or do they need better structuring to make them more readable? Should we add some videos or illustrations to make the page better and hold a visitor’s attention. These types of insights are not one-size-fits-all and require spending some time on the site. There are some more straight forward items in the User Experience department that can be looked at as well, such as color schemes, use of motion, ease of navigation, etc. This part of the review looks at what brings visitors into the site and how to keep them on the site longer and become customers. The more data we have available (analytics, Google Search Console), the better we’ll do at reviewing the content on your site.

Off-Site Signals

The final part of a comprehensive SEO review is off-site signals. Some of these contribute heavily to traffic. Having your business listed in Google’s My Business directory, for example, is a critical step. Directory listings, reviews, social media and links are all important aspects to making sure your business looks credible and sends good trust signals to the search engines.

Why an SEO Audit is a Good Idea for Your Website

When is the last time you checked on the health of your website for SEO purposes. If your business is like a lot of local businesses, you don’t have a dedicated in-house SEO employee. You might have a general marketing coordinator or someone to post some new blog posts on your website or on social media platforms. But have you ever had someone actually check your website for opportunities that could help it show up a lot more to your potential customers?

Most Website Designers Don’t Know SEO

This is very clear from looking at a lot of websites. The most obvious sign is that the Title in your browser for the home page of your new website says “HOME” and nothing else. The fact it says home is a huge problem, unless you are involved in the business of homes and even then it needs to be in some type of context. 25% of all websites don’t even have titles on their pages according to a HubSpot analysis. While getting the perfect page title isn’t easy, having “home” or no page title just shows a complete lack of knowledge among web designers. There are many more examples…but just realize that in many cases the web designer is much better at making the site look good to people than they are at making it look good to a search engine.

Just Because Your Website Shows Up, Doesn’t Mean it is Optimized

Type a little html in a text editor and upload the file to a server and you have a basic website. While almost no websites are designed that way anymore, it is an illustration that just because your website shows up when you type in your url, doesn’t mean it is optimized to be found. There are many technical items that should be checked to make sure your website is running at its best. Sometimes there may be limits based on the hosting platform you currently have, but there are often a lot of small tweaks that can be made to make a website run faster, be indexed by search engines easier and just work better.

A Cost Effective Way to Improve

For small businesses with an owner inclined to spend time on web marketing or an employed tasked with SEO as part of many other duties, an SEO audit can provide a road map. SEO Audits are like hiring a consultant to take a look at the current situation and provide direction for how to improve. We use this same tool as the starting point with any ongoing SEO clients because it provides us with a starting point for what to spend our time working on. If you’re a small business that can’t afford to spend thousands of dollars a year on SEO, a site audit is a great way to get pointed in the right direction of what to do next to improve your site without the ongoing fees.

Need Help – Learn About Our SEO Services

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WordPress is software. Software needs updates.

Software updates are a constant in your life. You probably update your Mac or Windows PC’s operating system regularly. Plus there are updated anti-virus definitions, Microsoft Office updates, updates to apps on your phone, etc. We’ve all just gotten used to the fact that software is something that needs updates to fix bugs, add functionality or patch security vulnerabilities. And WordPress Websites are no different. WordPress is a software platform that just happens to run on your web server instead of a physical machine in your office or a phone in your pocket.

WordPress Averages 9 Updates Each Year

Since the release of version 2.1, WordPress has put itself on a schedule to put out new feature releases every 3 to 4 months. In addition there are always a number of security and maintenance releases throughout the year. Over the past three years, this has translated into an average of 3 version updates and 6 security and maintenance releases per year.

• 2016 – Versions 4.5 and 4.6 plus 6 security and maintenance releases
• 2015 – Versions 4.2, 4.3 and 4.5 plus 7 security and maintenance releases
• 2014 – Versions 3.9, 4.0 and 4.1 plus 6 security and maintenance releases

Only 40% of WordPress sites are current

With so many updates, the majority of site owners are not keeping up to date. W3Techs, a company that surveys web technologies, report on November 1, 2016 showed that over 10% of WordPress installations were still running on version 3.9 or lower. That means over 10% of WordPress site owners haven’t updated in 2 years or more.

The same report showed that only 39.6% of all WordPress installations were running on the most current version (4.6) two and a half months after the most recent release.

Plugins and Themes are Software Too

In addition to WordPress updates, the theme (or visual skin that often has some functionality built in) and plugins (added functionality) need regular updates. These updates arrive on different schedules than WordPress core updates because they are produced by individuals or companies that are not directly affiliated with WordPress. Plugin and theme update schedules vary significantly, so it is important to either regularly review your site for updates or use a scanning program to notify you when updates are needed.

Not Updating is a Huge Security Risk

Running outdated WordPress software is a huge security risk. As we noted above, WordPress has averaged 6 security and maintenance updates each year, plus improved security with each full version update. Developers are actively fixing security risks which upon patching can become known to hackers. Not updating leaves holes in your site security that may be exploitable because hackers use bots to search for sites running specific versions or sometimes the bots just target every WordPress installation out there.

In the first half of 2016, Sucuri, a respected website security company, reported that about 55% of hacked WordPress websites they cleaned were not running the most recent version of WordPress. In addition, Sucuri found that just 3 out-of-date plugins were responsible for 22% of all hacked WordPress sites that they cleaned.

Regular management of your website will go a long way to preventing security risks.

Maintenance and Monitoring Improves Website Performance

Updates to WordPress core files and to plugins helps your website perform at a high level. Each time these software components are updated, developers tweak them to fix bugs and improve the way your site works. Some of these changes can help improve speed on your site. In addition to updates, there are times when new options become available that will improve the way your site works. An active webmaster will be able to take care of these improvements easily or recommend more comprehensive changes that will improve your site. This is especially true when an experienced web marketer takes a regular look at your website analytics with an eye on areas that can be improved.

Need Help Maintaining Your WordPress Site? We Offer Webmaster Services.

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1. Drives Traffic and leads to Your Website
2. Generates Phone Calls for Your Business
3. Better Value Than Traditional Advertising

Pay Per Click Drives Traffic to Your Website

Pay Per Click Advertising is a great way to drive traffic to your website. Large companies understand this. Some of America’s largest retailers have reportedly spend $50 million per year on Google AdWords alone. Most companies don’t have those kinds of resources, but that doesn’t mean you have to miss out on traffic and the customers it brings with it.

Top Small Business Website Traffic Sources

Small business websites vary a lot in where they get traffic from, but here are the most common traffic sources. If you’d like to see a more detailed breakout, read about where your website traffic comes from.

1. Organic Traffic – Getting Found through major search engines
2. Pay Per Click Advertising – Paid Traffic primarily through search engine ads
3. Direct Traffic/Other – People typing in your site or traffic with missing referral data
4. Referral Traffic
5. Social Traffic

Our average Pay Per Click Management client receives about 25% of all website traffic through advertising on Google and Bing. Generally, the percentage decreases some for clients who are also actively pursuing SEO strategies for their sites. The percentage increases significantly for websites that have existed only a short time (because they are not getting much in terms of organic traffic). If you are not using pay-per-click advertising for your site, you are missing out on significant traffic gains you wouldn’t get otherwise.

PPC is Great for Young Companies

Pay Per Click can make a big difference for startups and companies that don’t rank well in the search results. It is also great for companies that are trying to grow quickly. A 2014 study of Inc Magazines 5,000 fastest growing companies revealed that they spent an average of over $20,000 per year on pay per click because it helped drive traffic and customers. You don’t have to spend that much. Average local businesses can spend $200/month to $1,000/month and still do very well with lead generation.

Pay-Per-Click Reaches More Customers, Even If Your SEO is Great

According to Google studies, 89% of AdWords traffic is in addition to what you would get if you relied on your organic listing alone. That means that very few of the people clicking on your ad would have clicked on your website listing in the organic search rankings even if your ad wasn’t there. Why is this true? Studies of the way people look at browser show that they spend more time looking at the top left side of the page. Google AdWords positions its ads at the top of the page taking up 80% or more of the search results page before scrolling and those ads get the most attention from people viewing the screen. A few years back, a study showed that 65% clicks went to ads when people used keywords showing they were looking to purchase a product or service. That means customers are more likely to click on your ad than your organic listing.

Pay Per Click Can Make Your Phone Ring

According to the media and advertising consulting firm BIA/Kelsey, phone calls edge out website forms as providing the best quality leads. Their survey of business owners show website leads provide many good quality leads, but phone calls provide more excellent quality leads. While pay per click is known for driving website traffic, it is also a great tool for driving phone calls. That is especially true now that mobile searches play such an important role in driving leads. For businesses where there is a sense of urgency from the consumer, phone calls are often better than website leads (which take longer to respond to). When you need a tow truck or your air conditioner is broken, you are more likely to call to get help faster. Using Call Only campaigns, optimizing all campaigns with phone call extensions and other tactics, pay per click can be turned into a phone call generation tool, rather than a web visit generation tool.

Pay Per Click is a Better Value than Traditional Advertising

The old model in advertising was based on how many people could potentially see your advertisement. When buying advertising space in a newspaper, you would talk with the sales representative about circulation and cost per thousand impressions (CPM). There was no focus on results and very little opportunity to target just those people interested in your products or services. Pay per click has changed all of that.

Super Targeted

In traditional print, radio or television advertising, you could do a little targeting using demographics. You could select the sports section of the newspaper or choose the country music station at a certain time of day, but you could never choose only to advertise to people who were showing an interest in your product or service. That could only happen in the phone book…which made it a successful option for many years. Search Engine Marketing takes the best of the phone book targeting and makes it even better. With pay per click, you can target by country, state, city, zip code, or even a radius around your business. On top of location, you can target by time of day, day of the week and more. So if you own a restaurant and want to showcase your lunch specials from 10am until 1pm, Monday through Friday, to people looking up restaurants, you can do that.

Being able to be super targeted increases the chance that you are hitting the right person with the right message at the right time. It means there is much less waste. So by not paying for advertising that is reaching the wrong audience, you save a lot of money.

More Trackable

One of the challenges of traditional advertising has always been that it has been hard to track where your results are coming from. Pay per click and other digital advertising haven’t completely solved that problem, but they have made it a lot easier. For example, we can track many details about website visits generated by AdWords campaigns, including who has filled out a form. Add in some call tracking and it is possible to gather some basic data on how many phone call leads are coming in because of seeing your ads, even if they don’t end up clicking on them. Better data gives you more decision making power when it comes to deciding whether to invest more or less in a particular type of advertising.

Flexible

Using pay per click or other digital advertising is usually a lot more flexible than traditional advertising methods. If you put an ad in the phone book, you are committing to a year of advertising at a set monthly rate. With pay per click, you can set monthly budgets, but unless you sign a contract stating otherwise, you don’t have to stick to the same budget or even advertise all the time. If you have a seasonal business and want to increase advertising at certain times of the year, it is usually possible to drive more leads pretty quickly. If your staff is overwhelmed and you need a little time to hire and expand, you can temporarily reduce your advertising spend. And if something isn’t working, you can always give up on it and try something else because once the clicks stop, you stop paying.

Get Started with Pay Per Click!

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Have you ever wondered where your website traffic comes from? Hopefully you have an analytics package installed so that you can track everything that happens. For small businesses, a good choice is to use Google Analytics. It is free and provides a more robust solution than you will usually get from a hosting provider. But what do all those numbers mean and is your website performing well? Here is where most small business website traffic comes from and why.

Types of Website Traffic

The main types of website traffic are:

1. Organic Search
2. Paid Search/Display
3. Direct Traffic
4. Referral
5. Social

Some people will count email marketing traffic or some other traffic source, but these are generally the big five.

Organic Search Traffic

Organic traffic comes from searchers finding you on a search engine (Google, Bing, Yahoo!, AOL, etc). Growing this type of traffic is the main reason you’d hire an agency to do SEO work for your website.

Paid Search/Display Traffic

All your paid advertising campaigns come into play here. Google AdWords, Bing Ads, display ads, etc.

Direct Traffic

Not as simple as it sounds. Direct would make you think that only people who have your website bookmarked or type the address in would count in this category. That would be incorrect. Anything that the analytics package can’t figure out ends up here. That means it could be any of the other types of traffic or actual direct traffic.

Referral Traffic

When someone finds your website through a link on another site, it counts as referral traffic. Something to watch out for here though is referral spam. If you are looking at your analytics without any filtering, you are probably seeing some really nice referral traffic. Unfortunately, in most cases, it isn’t real. It is bot driven and in most cases they are using a trick to make your analytics pick them up without ever visiting your website.

Social Traffic

Referral traffic from social sites like Facebook and Twitter. This was added to make it easier to identify how social media is impacting your site.

What should you expect on a small business site?

Traffic is going to depend upon what you are doing to market your website. If you do a lot of advertising, you’ll probably see a higher percentage of your visits coming from it. But here is what we found by analyzing website traffic across a variety of industries.

About Half of All Traffic is From Organic Search

We found 48% of traffic to small business websites comes from Organic Search. This shows why some level of SEO is still a very important part of your website marketing plan.

Paid Search and Banner Ads drive almost 25% of Traffic

On average, the websites we studied received 24% of their traffic from paid search. The percentage tended to be higher with young companies, where the websites have only existed for 2 years or less. It also tended to be higher for companies not actively pursuing an SEO strategy.

We don’t know exactly where 1/5 of Traffic Comes From

Analytics reports showed that 19% of traffic was direct. But we already know that this number is probably way to large. One recent study showed more than half of direct traffic is actually likely additional organic traffic. That would mean that SEO is even more important, as around 60% of all traffic comes from organic search. So that leaves about 9% of traffic left over in the direct category, at least some of which is really people typing in your website from seeing it elsewhere or because they are current customers.

Social and Referral Traffic Usually Stink

The 6% referral traffic is probably inflated by analytics spam that we didn’t manage to weed out. Yes, you’ll get some clicks to your site from links in directories and elsewhere, but unless you have a pretty robust plan in place, referral links won’t be a huge part of your website traffic.

Social was even worse. Only 3% of traffic came from social and even companies with pretty active Facebook pages were not getting website traffic from them. It seems folks that follow you on social networks like to stay on the social networks when they interact.

And other studies say…

…something quite similar. A 2014 study showed that 51% of traffic was coming from organic search and only 5% from Social Media. The largest variation is usually paid advertising traffic, which makes sense because some companies believe in it, while others think the pay-per-click model costs too much.

Start Driving More Organic Search Traffic or Paid Advertising Traffic to My Site Now!

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Who Invented Pay Per Click?

Bill Gross is generally credited with inventing Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising for his early search engine named Go To. When Gross started Go To in 1998, search engines that relied upon something other than human listings were just starting to take off. Gross started charging companies to advertise on his search listings and charged for each click, rather than by the impression, a revolutionary idea. Go To eventually became Overture and became an ad selling network for portal or search engine partners. It eventually was bought by Yahoo!

How Pay Per Click Works

There are only a few main parts to pay per click advertising. The following applies mostly to search engine advertising, but parts are true for all pay per click advertising.

1. Keywords
2. Ads
3. Website Page
4. Auction to determine who’s ad shows up

Bidding on Keywords

In the search engines, you select keywords that represent words people searching for your products or services would type into the search bar. You have to enter a maximum bid, which is the most you are willing to pay for one click from a potential customer. This is how you target your customers.

Creating Ads

Traditional PPC ads are text ads. Search engines wanted to keep things fast, and photos used to take a long time to load in the days before high speed connections. On some platforms, a photo can accompany the text ad. Just like any other advertising, your ad is designed to attack attention and make potential customers interested in what you are selling.

Website Landing Pages

When someone clicks on your ad they are directed to a page on your website. This is called the landing page. It can be the home page of your site, but it is better if it is more specific to what your ad is trying to sell.

The Modified Auction

In the early days, pay per click was not nearly as sophisticated as it is today. It was actually pretty simple. The company that was willing to pay the most for a click would always be in the top spot of the search result ads. This left deep-pocketed advertisers an opportunity to purchase the top spot for just about any keyword they wanted. But to make money as a search engine, people actually have to click on the ads. It is the only time the advertiser pays. They quickly realized that ads that were not related to the person’s search didn’t get clicked on nearly as often as related ads. This is where complexity entered pay per click and the reason it is important to do a very good job of matching up keywords, ads and landing pages when advertising on Google or Bing Ads today.Pay per click, on most platforms, no longer works as a straight auction, where the top bidding advertiser gets to have the top spot. A concept called Quality Score is used by both Google and Bing in determining which advertiser gets the top position and all additional positions. The factors involved in determining which location your ad will land include:

• How well the keywords match your website landing page
• How well your ad text matches your keywords and landing page
• What kind of historic click-through-rate (percentage of times the ad gets clicked) your ad has
• Your maximum bid per click

Quality Score and your bid are factored together and the search engine ranks the ads that could be shown in order. If you have a good quality score (relevance rating) and a high enough bid, your ad will be in the top position. Too low of a Quality Score or bid and your ad won’t show up at all.

Pay Per Click is a Complex World

There is no doubt about it, pay per click is pretty complex. It is much more difficult to understand and manage than traditional forms of advertising like the phone book or local newspaper. However, the results when it is done well are excellent. Fortunately, even small business owners don’t have to know much about pay per click to have success with it. Rather than trying to learn a very complex skill, the best solution is to turn to professional management.

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What is Pay Per Click?

Let’s start with the basics. Pay Per Click (PPC) describes advertising on the Internet where you only pay when someone clicks on your ad.

The largest player in this industry for years has been Google AdWords. Google AdWords offers two main types of pay per click advertising. The first is advertising on search results. These are the text ads you see at the top of most Google search results pages. Advertising on search results is also known as Search Engine Marketing, but this is the same thing as PPC. The text ads in the first 3-4 spots on the page are chosen in a competitive auction, but the advertiser only pays if their ad is selected by the viewer. Bing Ads is the main competitor to Google in the Search Engine Marketing type of PPC.

You can also have PPC with display ads. Google runs the Google Display Network across a host of large and small publishers’ websites. Not all display ads are PPC…but that is another discussion for another day.

Other sites have their own form of PPC ads available. Facebook is the largest, but LinkedIN and others also offer PPC advertising that is on their sites, rather than in search results or spread out across a large network of sites.

PPC Management

Ok. So now that you understand the basics of what Pay-Per-Click is, we can introduce the management aspect. Pay Per Click Management is simply professionally managing advertisers’ PPC accounts to best optimize their performance.

Pay Per Click Management Services can be the difference between success and failure in a Pay Per Click account. There are hundreds of decisions that have to be made with every pay per click account. Professional management services take all the guesswork out of setting up and optimizing your PPC accounts.

PPC Management is a fairly specialized service. There are some specialized agencies that handle very large clients (large companies spend millions each year on PPC advertising), but fewer that are both interested in and qualified to handle management for small and medium companies.

Is PPC Management Affordable?

Fees vary by management company, customer budgets and if the PPC campaigns are spread out over a number of services (like having AdWords, Bing Ads and Facebook accounts). For small accounts, we charge as little as $95/month for management. There are other costs, like account setup involved as well.

We’d argue that hiring the right PPC manager will save you much more than their services will cost. Mistakes clients make trying to manage their own PPC accounts can waste hundreds, if not thousands of dollars. The same can be said for companies that offer PPC services, but don’t really understand how to get the most out of their accounts.

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Design and Development

Here is what most people think about when they ask the question, “how much does a website cost?” They really want to know how much is it going to take to get their business up and running on the web, or with a brand new look as a redesigned website.

Here is where a lot of the question marks come into play in determining the cost of a website.

Type of Development

The majority of small business websites we see need more design than development. Real development starts getting into doing things like connecting your inventory system to your website or creating an online insurance marketplace. This kind of development can cost millions. Even if your needs are not that big, development of special functionality costs money. The good news is that in many cases, we can find and purchase prewritten modules to handle the most common things businesses want to accomplish. This is a lot more cost effective than development from scratch. Think of this like buying an app on your phone to allow you to do something you couldn’t do with the basics that it came with.

Adding some off-the-shelf functionality to your site adds two costs. The first is to purchase the license to use that add-on software. The second is to actually get it working for you. Anytime you add features to your website, you are adding costs. Most website design companies will include the most commonly requested features. Here are some of the most commonly requested or beneficial.

Quality of Design

More design expertise will cost more money. And it is important for your site. A series of Stanford University studies concluded scientifically what we all pretty much understand, that people judge your site (and therefore your business) on how the site looks. We’ve won dozens of design awards. We pay attention to details like quality of photos and how things look on different devices. Even with responsive design, there is need to tweak some things for different classes of displays (computers, tablets, phones).

Website design can cost $0. If you want your website to be more than an address on your business card, then avoid using a free website builder tool.

Website design can cost $500-$1,000. We’ve rebuilt a number of these websites designed by a “friend” or “relative.” Other times, this is what it appears that $59/month package from a mass online website design site (generally with designers and programmers outside the United States) with cost you. Here’s why that might not be a good idea.

Content Development

Photography, video, copywriting and how much information needs to be put on a website impact the final cost a lot.

Photos and Video

Photos and videos bring the design to life. Developing good visual content costs money, so what you already have access to will impact how much you need to add to your website design budget.

Professionally taken photos and videos are the best solution for making your site unique and providing just the right look. If you do not already have a good library of photos or videos, add in several hundred to several thousand dollars.

Sometimes royalty free photos are the way to go. This is generally also a less expensive solution. However, we do still have to search for high quality photos and there are licensing costs involved. These might be built into the general design estimate or shown as a separate line item.

Taking your own photos is usually not a good idea unless you have someone with some photography training. Photos and videos taken with your phone might be passable for social media, but they generally are not going to give you the look you want on a polished business website.

Copywriting and On-Page SEO

Copywriting is critical for two reasons. It sells your company to the website visitor and gets you found on search engines. Copywriting is a part of good SEO (Search Engine Optimization), which allows new customers to find you. Once on your website, you need to describe your business and sell the customer on picking up the phone, sending an email or completing a sale. Some website designers provide no copywriting services. Others (especially the generic website companies) provide you with generic copy that tends to feel like it was copied and pasted from another website, then edited for your location and other details.

Providing your own copywriting will save on your overall website design costs. If you are looking at a redesign, you probably have the copy already in place on your current site. It will just be a matter of doing a little light editing for SEO and space reasons before dropping it in the new design. If you are starting from scratch and have internal marketing resources, then writing pages yourself will help keep complete design costs down.

Hiring us or another professional copywriter increases the cost of the site, but provides advantages. We’ll keep the copy process moving, so the entire website project doesn’t come to a complete stop while the copy is being developed. It also allows us to do the best possible job of writing with a mind for both SEO and sales. Good quality copywriting isn’t cheap. American Writers and Artists, Inc suggests that writers charge between $1,500 and $3,500 for a 5-6 page website. Because we are able to integrate both writing and website design, we are able to keep the cost per page lower, but it does make a big impact in final cost of the site.

Size of the Website

The larger the website, the more content you will need in the form of copy and photos. A lot of businesses just getting started on the web will create around a 6 page website. You may need 40 pages. There is no way to provide a one-size-fits all price with this much variability. The more pages you have the more design and content you need.

Most small business websites start out with just 2-3 page templates. Your home page is one page template, then your internal pages might share another page template and your contact page may be its own template. On more complex websites, you might need more page templates.

Whether you are providing content (photos and copy) or need it produced for additional pages will make a big difference in how much adding more pages will cost.

Other Website Costs

• Domain name $15/year. Available just about everywhere. You’ll need at least one domain name for your website. More domain names can be helpful for tracking specific offline campaigns, etc. Once upon a time, you could buy up all the misspellings and different top level domains (.com, .net etc) to make sure everyone found your company site when typing it in. There are now over 700 top level domains, so you are best sticking with just a handful you are most likely to use, including the main one for your website.
• Hosting. $150+/year. For most small businesses, this means shared hosting at one of the many providers. While it is not always true that “you get what you pay for,” moderately priced hosting may far outweigh saving $50-$100/year buying the cheapest hosting you can find.
• Basic Maintenance. $200+/year. You need at least basic maintenance. Very few websites are built on static html code without using javascript, php or some other programming language. Once you want to add a contact form (a fairly standard feature) or almost anything else that moves to your website, then you are going to need some type of software running behind your site. We all know that software invariably needs updating for bug fixes, improvements and security reasons. The more software your website uses, the more updates and patches it will need. Some companies think this is a waste of money, but not maintaining the basics of the website is pretty much the same as driving your car all year without changing the oil.

So $365/year is about the bare bones for keeping your website running every year after it has been designed.

The Bottom Line

So what’s the bottom line? Again it depends on exactly what you need done. But we find most businesses need somewhere between 6-10 pages, not a lot of high-cost functionality and some help with photos and copy. Most of the websites we have designed and built over the past decade fall within the range of $2,500-$5,000. Is that a pretty big price range? Yes. But with so many factors that can change the cost of the website, it is about as close as we can come nailing down an actual cost without having more details. Contact us for a more accurate quote.

Up Front Cost – $2,500 – $5,000

Annual Hosting and Maintenance – $365 and up

Ongoing SEO and Advertising to bring in new customers – Don’t forget about getting new customers to find your new website!

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What are Website Features?

There are a lot of articles with similar titles that suggest things like “simple to use navigation” or a “call to action” as features. If these are really features, then they should be considered standard features that every website should have.

Here are some things we’d consider standard for a website even though there is a lot of website design and development that doesn’t measure up:

• Great Visual and Functional Design
• Easy to Use Navigation
• Search Engine Friendly setup
• Well written content
• Security Measures Included
• Mobile Friendly

What we’re talking about with features are things that not everyone is doing and may not be right for every site. However, they provide improvements in customer experience, your company’s experience or both. Some are improvements over the standard features you’d find on most websites.

1. Responsive Design

Doesn’t this fit into mobile friendly? Yes it does, but we’ll include responsive design as a feature because many web designers are not doing this yet. Why is mobile friendliness important? Mobile website use is climbing rapidly. The Pew Research Center tracks Internet related data and has found that 58% of American adults have smartphones and 42% have tablets. Those numbers are growing rapidly, increasing the chances that customers on screens smaller than a desktop monitor will be trying to access your website regularly. Unfortunately, designs for desktops don’t always work well on tablets and they certainly don’t work well on smartphones.

So at the very least you need some type of mobile friendly solution. The options are pretty much:

1. Dynamic Serving of pages based on device type
2. A dedicated Mobile Site
3. Responsive Design

Why go with responsive design over the other options?

1. Google actually recommends responsive design as the preferred option.
2. Responsive design makes keeping your website updated simpler. With both of the other options, you generally have to make content updates to more than one page, which can get pretty time consuming if you make even semi-regular updates.
3. Another benefits of responsive design is that you can provide your entire website and all its content to mobile users. Most dedicated mobile sites allow users with only a handful of pages and sometimes no way to view the entire site. If the information that a customer is looking for doesn’t show up on a mobile site, then they will go elsewhere.

2. Advanced Contact Forms

Providing contact information on a website comes in many forms. The easiest way to add a contact email to a website is creating a link. There are a lot of reasons to use a contact form over just dropping an email address on a page.

1. Protects your email address from scrapers and spammers
2. Allows for additional interaction with customers on Thank You pages
3. Allows for tracking if leads came from online advertising
4. Force potential customers to provide more specific information than they might otherwise provide
5. Allows for advanced functions to enhance the user experience.

For these reasons, contact forms have become pretty standard across websites. However, the most common contact form is great for simple requests, but not always the best way for you to handle all requests.

Sometimes you want to be able to ask for specific information from a customer.

Here is a sample of an appointment request contact form we created for a dental client of ours that collects the basic contact information from the patient and allows them to request an appointment at a specific date and time. Additional information about the reason for their appointment helps the front office staff at the dental office to provide answers and find an alternative appointment time if the one being requested is not available.

Sometimes you may want to ask for specific information from certain types of customers. To keep from annoying customers we can create a contact form that only shows certain fields when the answer to a previous question creates the need for more information. If a customer is asked how they’d like to be contacted, the form could only show the field for address, if they asked for something in the mail. This helps create a better customer experience.

Another example is using the response on a contact form to route the request to the appropriate person inside your company. You could use this to route sales inquiries to salespeople and service inquiries to customer service representatives or any number of other scenarios.

Other things we’ve done with contact forms:

• Contest Entries that automatically stop after a limited number of entries
• Require checking a disclaimer box prior to sending emails for our law firm clients.

3. Blogs or Article Databases for Content Marketing

Relevance matters in how your website ranks and as the search engines continue to try to improve the quality of the results they give you, the one thing that has remained important for being relevant is good quality content.

We’ve seen many times how a great article about an evergreen topic can increase the traffic on your website significantly. But not all websites are set up to handle regular changes, especially if you don’t have technical minded person working in your office. You can hire someone, including us, to handle writing and posting new articles or you can make sure your website is set up so pretty much anyone that can use a word processor can add articles. Even if you don’t plan on creating a bunch of great articles right now, it is better to set up a website that can easily handle this type of feature than to spend a great deal of money on redevelopment in a year when you decide that a company blog is actually really important.

4. Portfolios or Product Collections

For many businesses, having a portfolio or product display section is important to helping sell customers on the business.  Manufacturers that don’t sell directly online can still benefit from a showcase of their products, whether to provide information for business-to-business sales or to drive interest in their products at the retail level. We can build sortable portfolios, so users can more easily find just what they are looking for without going through the menu.

5. Client or Member Login Area

Sometimes you may want to provide additional information to your customers that you don’t really want a competitor to easily access. We’ve put member areas in place for non-profit groups to share information (notes, meeting minutes, contact directories) that only members can see. If there are forms, photos, or documents you want to make only available to customers or employees, a member only area is one solution.

There are numerous other features that you could want on your website. Here’s just a short list of some other functionality you might want.

• Offer tutorials or training and track progress
• Engage users with quizzes, surveys and polls
• Simple way for company employees to update the website

Sometimes these can help you learn more about your customers or make their experience better. You have to be careful that you don’t waste money on “features” that actually make your site less attractive to new customers or less user friendly.

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