Make your listing complete

Of course this assumes you already have a listing. You may find even if you haven’t set one up in Google there is one there already (as it pulls data from other places like yellow pages). If that is the case then visit Google Places and find your listing and ‘claim’ it.

Google likes to see a listing that is complete. This means that any time Google asks for some information then provide it (absolutely every field). Here is a screenshot of a complete listing for our wedding videos case study.

This is a 'complete' places listing - Click on the image to see a bigger picture of it.

You will notice in the image above:

• The description has been entered – it’s a good idea to use all of the available words and use your keywords (I’m getting onto Dave about updating this today!). Note it’s against the rules to put your keywords in the company name field.
• The listing has reviews (note there are also reviews on other sites – see below
• It has the relevant categories selected (it’s best to use the ones they suggest as opposed to creating your own)
• It has an offer which changes from time to time
• It has the maximum amount of photos and videos uploaded (note if you don’t have any videos you can use something like Animoto to create nice videos for free).
• All other fields are used including opening hours etc.

Make your listing consistent

Consistency is also important to Google. If Google can’t find you anywhere else on the web they will think that is unnatural so:

• Make sure your address is on your website (the exact same address in the exact same format).
• Make sure you are in other business directories (particularly ones that Google gets feeds from like True Local and Yellow Pages).
• If you have reviews in Google Places, then Google would naturally expect you to have reviews in other places as well.

I also think it’s a good idea to have a link to Google Places on your contact form and also have your address there in the same format as it is in Google Places.

Build reviews into your business processes

Google likes to see reviews of your business but again Google is expecting this to follow a natural pattern. Adding a whole bunch of poorly written short reviews in one hit is a sure fire way to get into trouble. A much better idea is to build the review process into the way you do business which would mean:

• When you finish work with clients, ask them to write you a review on Google and send them a link to your places page. Do this via email or leave a little card giving them the address to go to.
• Mix it up so sometimes you send them to Google and other times you might get reviews on other sources like True Local.
• Google says you can’t give incentives for people to write a review but you can encourage them – use your imagination here and decide how much risk you want to take.
• Make sure these reviews trickle in over time which will happen naturally if you embed it into your business processes (as opposed to just adding a whole heap at once).

These reviews are on True Local, it's a good idea to get reviews on a number of sites which represent a natural pattern.

Focus on authority

One thing that a lot of people don’t remember with Google Places is that authority still matters. You might have a complete listing, you might have a lot of reviews but if you have a brand new domain with no backlinks then your competitor with an older domain and more links will win.

So all of your standard backlinking and authority techniques for SEO for your main page still apply here.

Rather than duplicate those here you can check out my ebook Small business search engine domination which covers these techniques. For local keywords it’s a good idea to focus specifically on getting links from local sites (i.e. directories or associations for example).

So this also means that it may take time to rank in Google places. You can do all of the things above but if you are still trailing your competitors when it comes to your site’s authority then it will take time to build that up.

The good news is that a lot of people are new to Google Places and doing all of the above is rare (particularly the reviews).

2 more things worth considering

1. Some people think that building backlinks to your places page (on Google – not your website) will result in that page having more authority. I haven’t experimented with this, my feeling is it’s probably unlikely that Google would view that as being natural but it could be something worth trying if you are super keen.
2. Location is important, if you are in a physical location that isn’t that close to the market you want to target, it is going to be harder. If your location is closeish – i.e 50k from a capital city then these optimisation steps may be enough to push you into contention (depending on what your competitors are doing). A more drastic step may be to change your location – either by actually moving or getting a virtual office (note it would have to be a physical office not a PO Box). But there are obvious downsides to doing something like this so I haven’t addressed this option here.

What do you think?

Let me know in the comments below if you have had any experience with ranking in Google Places and what you think of the points above.

A Website Designer is a blog by Dan Norris a passionate small business Web design expert from the Gold Coast, Australia. Read this full post here 4 ways to boost your Google Places ranking

Evernote has a very fitting logo. An Elephant never forgets

In my last article in this productivity series I talked about DropBox and how some of these new cloud technologies not only solve the problem that traditional software solves but also 1 or 2 more things at the same time.

This week we are looking at Evernote, which is very much in the same boat in terms of it being a great tool for taking notes but also a lot more.

Taking notes is part of every business person’s daily routine. Some people use hardcopy, some use software. Some rely on their memories.

In the past when you used software you might have used Notepad for general notes, you might have used Microsoft Word for more detailed notes and perhaps Outlook or similar to noting down tasks that you have to complete. And in all cases you might rely on just remembering some things or parts of notes particularly when you are in a different location. i.e. you are at the coffee shop and you think ‘ this would be a great idea for my business’ then when you get back to the office you save the note in Word to action at some time.

However what if:

• You use more than 1 device and you don’t want to install different software programs on all of your devices.
• You access your notes from more than 1 location.
• You want to share your notes with other people without duplicating them.
• You want to back up all of your notes rather than keeping them on your local machine.
• You want to create a note directly from your browser or from the application you are using (instead of copying and pasting all the time).
• You don’t want to rely on your bad memory every time you have an idea.

If any of these things are important to you then you are going to love Evernote.

What does Evernote do?

Evernote is essentially a note taker program but because it’s cloud based you end up using it for a lot more than you might think.

On your computer you can either use the web-based version (which I do) or you can install the Evernote program. You can add notes via the program or via the web and these notes are stored on Evernote’s servers.

You can also install a browser clipper so you can directly add bits of the web that you find and want to make a note of.

When you get onto another computer the notes are all there. If you are on someone else’s computer you can log in via the website to view and modify all of your notes.

When you are out and about with your phone you can use the Evernote app to view and modify notes. Similarly on the iPad you can install the Evernote app and do the same thing.

And of course you can share notes with other people so more than 1 person can contribute to it at the same time.

No matter what device or location you use to add / edit your notes, they are always available in all places.

Platforms

Evernote is available on any platform using the web-based version or as a program on Windows or Mac as well as mobile versions for Apple (iOS), Android, Blackberry and Windows Phone 7.

Here is what Evernote looks like on the PC (Note I just use the web-based version as I don’t use too many programs but it is quite similar).

This is what Evernote on the PC looks like - Saving notes on Evernote is a snap and they will all be stored there for viewing on your other devices

The application will look slightly different on each device but the notes you will create will be the same.

This means that no matter what combination of devices you are working with you will be able to access your information whether you are at your home computer, laptop, tablet or smartphone.

I use the iPhone version to capture ideas when I am out and about

Here is what it looks like on the iPhone.

As you can see the interface is considerably different to the PC version but Evernote still stores all of my notebooks and notes in much the same way and I can open, view and edit notes on different devices regardless.

Because I get a lot of my ideas when I’m out and about, I tend to use Evernote quite a bit on my mobile or iPad and then when I get back into the office I know the notes are all sitting there in the web-based version for me to action.

And of course it works the other way around, if I find something on the web I want to read when I’m at the coffee shop you can just save it to Evernote using the web clipper and then when you get out you can check it out on the mobile version.

The iPad version uses the larger screen a lot better and has similar functionality to the full computer or web-based version.

What do you use it for?

I find like with a lot of this cloud based software that there are no hard and fast rules of what you might use it for.

For example I used to use Outlook notes or the notes app on the iPhone for jotting down notes that I wanted to action later. I now don’t use either of these. If it’s something that I want accessed from another location (which is more often than not true) then I’ll use evernote (note I no longer use Outlook at all).

To collect ideas for blog posts I used to use Outlook tasks or a Word document and now I just use Evernote.

For tasks that aren’t urgent (i.e. one’s I only want to action when I have some free time) I put those in Evernote so they don’t clutter up my to do list.

For some larger documents like the beginnings of blog posts of business strategies or ideas I’m working on I’ll often start them in Evernote and when they get big enough or important enough I’ll move them over to Google Docs or a Word document in Dropbox.

Evernote is generally the starting point for most of my ideas.

Other people use it for their task list, for shopping lists, for taking screenshots of whiteboards and saving them as notes (Evernote is smart enough to convert the whiteboard text to actual searchable text – note I haven’t tried this because I don’t own a whiteboard).

So you can use it for text notes, or images or even recording voice notes so to some people it will replace voice recording software as well.

Basically you can use it to replace a whole bunch of software as well as use it as your memory!

And of course like most of the software I am going to review in this series Evernote is free.

If you want to check it out, have a look at Evernote’s site.

If you are using it already I’d love to hear what you are using it for in the comments below.

A Website Designer is a blog by Dan Norris a passionate small business Web design expert from the Gold Coast, Australia. Read this full post here Replace your brain with Evernote

We are in very exciting times for technology right now. Technology always used to be a pain in the arse really didn’t it?

It wasn’t about ‘yay I can insert this USB drive and back up all of my stuff’ it was ‘bugger, I forgot to back up my stuff now it’s lost’.

The cloud movement has ushered in a new level of expectation when it comes to technology. People don’t just expect things to work. They expect them to work without thinking about them. They expect IT tools to perform functions that they aren’t primarily using them for! This is a big expectation but a lot of the examples that I am looking at in this new productivity series manage to do just that. They manage to replaces old software by performing functions more effectively while at the same time doing a lot more things – things you don’t have to or want to think about but things that are just as important.

To me DropBox is one of the best examples of this and is one of my favourite cloud based productivity tools for small business.

What is DropBox

Primarily DropBox is a tool that allows you to access your files from different places. But, it manages to do so without you having to do anything and not only that it manages to perform other functions without you having to think about them (backing up your data).

So this is how it works.

1. You install dropbox on your computers, phones / iPads etc and it adds a new folder on your computer.
2. You save files into this folder (whatever files you want just treat it like a normal folder)
3. When you view the documents on any of your devices these files are just there

Simple and brilliant..

Here you can see the Dropbox folder added to the normal documents area on a Windows PC

No more servers or networks

Before technologies like DropBox were available, if you wanted to have a document on your computer at work and at home you would do one of the following:

• Copy it to a USB, email it to yourself or upload it to the web somewhere (in which case you would be running 2 copies), or
• Have a server that centrally stored the files and access that server with something like a VPN (very slow and very expensive)

They were basically the two options. In fact I used to have a server that I paid $5,000 for and we virtually gave it away once I started using DropBox. The VPN was so slow it was barely usable and mobile access wasn’t an option.

What else does it do?

So while it’s primary function is to allow you to access files from various places it also does other awesome stuff:

1. You can share documents with other people. Just share the folder and anyone you share it with can add files to the folder and everyone can see it. How awesome! We use this every day with our team and even some of our clients.
2. It backs up everything automatically as a result of using the service and if you are a paid customer it even keeps a history of different versions of the file (no more backups, no more version control).
3. If you don’t have dropbox installed on your computer or your dinosaur IT people won’t let you install it, you can just visit dropbox.com and get all of your files – free web hosting!

Selecting a folder allows you to share it with friends just by putting in their email address. You can both use this web based version to access the files as well if you like.

So how much does this amazing technology cost?

Nothing of course. The basic plan gives you 2 gig of data and is totally free. More data costs money but compared to any other way of doing this sort of thing the price is minuscule. We use 50 gig accounts and pay under $10 / month per team member (there is also a teams option for bigger teams).

Any problems

One objection that some people have to solutions like DropBox is around security.

Some people think that because the files are on someone else’s server that the information is not secure from the point of view that someone else could view the files and from the point of view that their server could crash. These people need to consider this:

1. What you were doing before (emailing important documents, putting them on USB sticks and taking them home etc) is far less secure.
2. Dropbox’s servers are far far far less likely to crash than your own computer or your own server. And if they do, they have backups.

One objection however that has some validity in my opinion is that if you have a lot of data (perhaps in your business, or if you have lots of music, photos and videos) then DropBox may not be the best solution for handling all of it. When you add a file into your dropbox it uploads it to the cloud (using bandwidth). When you open your other devices it downloads all of the changed files to those devices (using bandwidth). If you say had hundreds of gigs of data and you were regularly changing large files this is going to be slow and it’s going to use a lot of bandwidth. At least while our internet (in Australia) is as bad as it is, this is a problem.

To get around this I don’t use DropBox for all of my files, I use it for my active files in my business and at home and I keep other libraries (like my past projects, website files, media libraries) out of dropbox.

Overall

Overall DropBox is such an exciting technology and if you aren’t using it or you are a small business who is looking into options like getting a server or a network I strongly encourage you to check it out (despite what your IT person says).

Let me know in the comments if you are using it and what you think or if you want to add anything else.

A Website Designer is a blog by Dan Norris a passionate small business Web design expert from the Gold Coast, Australia. Read this full post here Why you need dropbox

Web Control Room shows 1 page with charts from various sources to give you a full picture of your small business performance.

As a small business owner people are always asking me “How’s business”. But I’ve always felt that I don’t really know the answer to this question. To help me and other small business owners answer this question I have built a free tool called Web Control Room but more on that later.

Why don’t I know the answer?

So why don’t I know how my business is going? Well, sure if I log into Xero and click on enough buttons, I can find out how much I have invoiced for the month. But this doesn’t tell the whole story.

For example I get most of my leads through Google, so while my invoicing might be good this month, they won’t be much good next month if my position in Google has dropped. So I would have to log in to a tool to monitor this as well.

But then I get traffic from other sources including Social Media so to make sure it’s all good there I would have to keep an eye on Google Analytics and perhaps my social media influence (using Klout).

For most businesses there are a range of different places they need to go to really work out whether things are going well – a lot of the time it’s so time consuming to do so that they don’t bother.

For this reason I have built Web Control Room.

Announcing Web Control Room (private beta)

Web Control Room (beta) is a free tool that provides a 1-page summary of how you are tracking by talking to the systems you use in your business.

It does this by enabling you to connect to the various sources of business information that are important to you and then showing a 1 page report with charts from each system.

The focus is on whether things are going forwards or backwards and the system is colour coded so you can easily tell. By comparing the last period (usually monthly) with the current one you can view simple charts that show in green if things are better or red if things are worse. If you keep a regular eye on the report you should be able to notice quickly when things need attention.

Some of the services we are integrating into Web Control Room

Data sources

The current charts include your Google search results, website visitors from Google Analytics, newsletter opens from Mail Chimp and server uptime from siteuptime.com.

We are working on Klout score for social media influence and monthly invoicing from Xero.

However our main focus is to get some people using the system and then based on their feedback expand the system out to integrate with a lot more services.

In addition we will look at presenting different charts from some of the existing systems.

Beta sign up

I’m really keen to get some people actively using the system and it is available now as a private beta release.

For now it probably makes sense for people who use Google Analytics and Mail Chimp however we will add to the services  over time.

If you are interested in checking it out and keen to give us some feedback on how to improve it please visit Web Control Room and sign up for the private beta.

A Website Designer is a blog by Dan Norris a passionate small business Web design expert from the Gold Coast, Australia. Read this full post here How’s business?

In part 1 of how to build trust and authority online, I discussed the idea of running a business without advertising. Creating great content, becoming known as the expert in your field by creating a web presence that helps you build trust and authority. Instead of interrupting people who aren’t interested in your services, people come to you because you are the expert!

Sounds good right? But now?

In this post I am going to tell you the number 1 secret I use to build trust and authority online.

But before I do I’m going to fill you in on 5 other ways to build trust and authority online and give you some examples of how I do it in my business. Note these are all ‘online’ things, there are obviously loads of things you can do ‘offline’ that will also build your authority.

1.  Start blogging

I recommend WordPress for blogs

What you are reading right now is an article I have written because I am an active blogger. I have posted over 140 blog posts on my blog A Website Designer (lots more elsewhere).

Blogging has a lot of benefits but from a trust and authority perspective it has enabled me to:

• be associated with other well known bloggers,
• allow people to get to know me via the site and show some of my (limited) personality,
• build up a following on the blog and on social media,
• create content that people like to read and share, and
• engage and respond to comments on the blog, answering people’s questions etc.

All of this helps in building my authority and building trust among my audience. Your own website is the number 1 starting point for building authority because you have full control over the content and you have no restrictions.

There is a lot of info out there on business blogging, I will talk more about this in future posts as it’s something I’m quite passionate about.

Guest posting

Guest posting is also part of blogging but it’s about blogging on other people’s sites. This deserves it’s own mention here because when it comes to trust and authority guest posting offers a lot. Not only can you get in front of a whole new audience with your great content but you can also be seen to be associated with other expert bloggers which makes people trust you more.

Blog commenting

Commenting on other blogs is another aspect of blogging that will help you build authority. For one thing it gives you a chance to get to know other bloggers and possibly set up relationships perhaps for guest blogging opportunities or other partnerships in the future. However in addition to this, with plugins like CommentLuv (which automatically shows your last blog post under your comment on someone else’s blog) you can also get some interest from their audience if your comments are useful (i.e. people see your useful comment and go off and check out your latest blog post on a related topic).

2.  Write an ebook

My latest ebook 'Small business search engine domination'

I have written 4 ebooks so far. Ebooks are a brilliant way of building authority and they don’t take that much work. You can really go into detail on a topic in an ebook and you can showcase your full expertise. If you are an active blogger you will have loads of content you can use as a starting point for your ebook (your old blog posts and people’s comments).

People who take the time to download, possibly print an ebook are going to appreciate your expertise and trust you more than a 1 page blog post (assuming it’s a useful book). It’s also a really great tool for building a list.

Building authority online is about getting people to follow you and you do this by creating great content. An ebook is one way to create something more substantial than a blog post but still simple and free to create and publish (as opposed to a full book).

3.  Start an email newsletter

Mail Chimp allows you to send and track email newsletters for free

An email newsletter is still one of the best ways to engage with people and get them consuming your content. These days however people aren’t just going to sign up on your website for a newsletter for no reason. You need to build something that is useful to people.

When I used to have an email subscription form on my site I was lucky to get 1 email sign-up per month. After creating some useful content and asking people to sign up to my emails in exchange for downloading the content (ebooks, free downloads etc) I’m getting close to 100 a month!

A lot of people still find it convenient to just get the occasional email and don’t pro-actively log onto your blog to check for the latest articles. You can also track some useful stats with your emails so you can get some idea of how effective they are (i.e. I track how many people sign up with Google Analytics and track open and click rates in the email program).

Furthermore with services like Mail Chimp it doesn’t have to cost anything.

4.  Be social

Sign up for social media accounts on Facebook, Twitter and Google+

It’s hard to imagine someone who has established a good amount of authority online who doesn’t have a decent social media following. Social media sites like Facebook and Twitter are where the people are. It’s all well and good to have great content on your blog but you need to get people to read it.

Engaging with people on social media will help you promote your posts, it will help you become associated with other experts (and built trust through association) and it will immediately build ‘social proof’ where people can see that you have influence on social networks which automatically builds trust and authority.

Incidentally you can use a service like Klout to measure your influence on social media.

As a general rule based on market share online I would suggest signing up for Facebook, Twitter and Google+ in that order. Google+ mainly because they own search and announcements like the recent social search change reinforces that if you care about your search results you should be active in Google+.

5.  Join some forums

Forums are still a great way to market online and set yourself up as an authority. They would have to be the easiest way to get out there and start helping people with your expertise. Once you do this you will start noticing that people see you as an authority. Why wouldn’t they? You have solved their problems.

Simply sign up to a forum in your industry and after reading some posts and getting to know the forum start looking for opportunities to help people. For some people forums are the first place they will go to get problems solved. Depending on the rules you might even be able to point people to articles you have written to help them solve their problems. This will help more as they can see the full extent of your expertise on your blog.

I’m active in a few forums, I particularly like the Australian Flying Solo forums for small business owners as a general small business forum.

6.  My number 1 secret to building trust and authority online

Earlier on I said I would tell you my number 1 secret to building trust and authority online. In my field credibility is important. It’s very easy to start a website design business, and a lot of people have been burnt by dodgy providers. So people are looking for something that enables them to trust me when they visit my site. In my case I give them that thing before they get to my site and I do it by doing this.

When people see that my site is 1st out of 1.45 billion web pages when they search 'website design' that gives me immediate authority and trust.

Secret: Ranking number 1 in Google (for website design)

When you Google ‘website design’ my site comes up 1st in Australia (last time I checked, it fluctuates a bit). It’s amazing how many people who end up coming to see me or requesting a quote from us that mention this when they do so. I think most people know that Google is very good at determining the authority in any given industry. You can’t start a website design business this month and be topping Google next month it doesn’t work like that.

The great news is that a big part of why I am ranking number 1 in Google is because I have done all of the other things in this list. Creating great content that people want to share is a huge part of ranking well in the search engines. i.e. authority in people’s eyes is somewhat correlated with authority in the eyes of Google.

What do you do to build trust and authority online?

I’d love to know what you think of this post and what you do to build trust and authority online for your business so please comment below.

A Website Designer is a blog by Dan Norris a passionate small business Web design expert from the Gold Coast, Australia. Read this full post here My number 1 secret to building authority online

Dave from Video My Wedding

If you haven’t seen our first SEO case study check out how we took Flower Child from 32nd in Google to 1st in 2 months, doubling their organic search revenue in the process here.

For our second case study we are working with Brisbane wedding videos specialist Video My Wedding.

Overview

There is a fair bit of competition in this space and a number of competitors who have been around for a long time. However Dave has a few things in his favour including:

• His site is a few years old with some existing authority in the eyes of Google
• He is tech savvy so he can take ownership of some of the SEO tasks himself
• He’s an active blogger and active in social media

Keyword Choice

Dave was already ranking pretty well for keyword phrases with the word ‘Brisbane’ in them however because the search volume was fairly low we looked for some new keywords. We noticed he was ranking on page 2 for the keyword ‘wedding videos‘ (position 14) which was getting 590 exact match searches in Google. It’s not a huge amount but getting into the top of the front page should result in 50 or so visitors a month which is a nice start.

On page suggestions

Screenshot of video my wedding - click for a larger image

We started with some on-page suggestions. Dave manages his own site so we provided him with a list of suggestions and he made the changes that he was able to make within the ability of his theme.

General on page changes

The following are the general on page changes we suggested to Dave to make.

WordPress blog settings

The following changes are specific things suggested for WordPress to help with SEO.

Note for more information in WordPress specifically here is a great WordPress website checklist.

Client off-page work

Blog commenting

One of my philosophies with SEO is that the small business owner will get the most benefit if they take on some of the SOE tasks themselves.  This is why I wrote the  Small business search engine domination ebook which covers all of these things.

We chatted to Dave about these things and he was happy to take on some of these tasks in particular commenting on forums and blogs.

We produced a commenting spreadsheet for Dave which outlined 30 or so blogs from his industry some with ‘do follow’ comments and some with ‘no follow’. Dave has been commenting on these blogs since we started.

Active on blogging and social media

Dave has also been actively blogging on his site uploading videos of his work and comments about the wedding and the techniques etc. He is using some of the main keywords were possible to help with the SEO.

He has also been active on social media tweeting his blog posts and other relevant information and building a list of Facebook fans.

Our off page SEO work

We have just finished the first month of our basic SEO plan. As part of this plan we do the following:

• One article written for article marketing (note Dave has agreed to produce the articles which I always prefer if possible) and then we do the following.
• Post different versions of the article to 10 web 2.0 sites
• Post different versions of the article to 10 premium article sites manually and 50 second tier sites via bulk submission
• Submit business details to 10 premium business directories manually
• Submit business details to 50 second tier business directories via bulk submission
• Backlink all new properties to increase indexation
• Send a report each month with his position in Google and other stats and a list of the tasks we have completed.

Results so far

It’s early day s but it looks like we have moved onto the front page improving from 14 last month to 8th this month. This has resulted in a significant jump in traffic for that keyword.

After the next month we’ll post another case study article and an update on where the site is ranking.

Any questions?

If you have any comments or questions about the case study please feel free to ask below

A Website Designer is a blog by Dan Norris a passionate small business Web design expert from the Gold Coast, Australia. Read this full post here SEO case study 2 – Wedding Videos

I look at a lot of campaigns from people new to Adwords. The common complaint is that they tried it, but it didn’t work and they don’t know why. They’re burned and want to give up on it. As I look through the accounts, it’s usually not a case of the advertising medium being a problem, but rather they jumped into it without knowing what pitfalls could come their way.

These are the top 5 mistakes I see people doing in Adwords.

Pay attention and you’ll save a lot of money and have a much better experience in Adwords.

1.  Not knowing what you want people to do

Every time you send someone to your website, you’re paying for it (PPC literally stands for pay-per-click) so you better have a goal for them once they get to your site. Do you want them to buy a product via your online store? Do you want them to pick up the phone and call? Do you want them to fill out a form? Download some marketing materials? What do you want them to do? Until you know this, and you have a site built around this goal, don’t spend a penny on Adwords – you’ll be wasting your money.

2.  Not having a target CPA (cost per action)

Once you’ve figured out what you want someone to do, you need to figure out how much you’re willing to pay for them to do it. How much is that action worth to you?

Know your numbers!

I’m constantly amazed at how little people actually know about their numbers. They’re not quite sure what they want someone to do and they’re not quite sure what they’d pay for it. I know, I know, these first two points aren’t even Adwords specific information, but anytime you do any sort of marketing, these are the first two questions you need to ask and answer before you start spending money.

3.  Combining search & display campaigns

Google’s Search and Display networks are completely different animals. Click & impression volumes are completely different and expected click-through-rates on each network vary wildly. Google automatically opts your campaigns into both when you first start advertising. Know which network you want to advertise on and uncheck the other box.

If you’re advertising on the Search network, make sure your settings look like this:

Otherwise, you’ll be sending Google lots of money and getting mixed results along with data that is harder to track and less useful overall.

4.  Using all broad match keywords

If you input your keywords into Google right off the bat, they’ll default to broad match keywords. Don’t let this happen. Broad match can work well sometimes, but often matches keywords on a much more liberally basis than you’ll most likely be happy with (If you haven’t figured it out by now, most of Google’s default settings are designed to put more money in their pocket, not yours).

If you’re on a tight budget, start by bidding on exact match types of your keywords. To do this simply put your keyword in square brackets like this:

Broad Match – keyword

Exact Match – [keyword]

This will have your ads show only on searches that exactly match the keyword you’re bidding on. This should cut costs a lot as you start to get data and learn what keywords perform well. Once you get that data, you can expand your keywords to phrase or broad match modifier (BMM) match types to get more volume.

5.  Not using any negative keywords

Negative keywords tell Google what keywords you explicitly DONT want to be bidding on and makes sure your ads don’t show for these keywords.

For example, if you own an office furniture store and don’t sell beds, you would put -bed as a negative keyword. This means anytime the worth “bed” is included in a Google query, your ads will not show. This lets you cut spend on low-converting keywords that are triggering your ads and focus on bidding on things that you do sell like chairs, desks, lamps, etc.

While you may have a hard time figuring out these keywords in advance, a good way to find these keywords once you campaign has started is via the “see search terms” button.

After running your ads for a while, click on that and select “see all.” If you’ve received enough impressions, you’ll be able to see which terms have triggered clicks and determine if they’re worth bidding on. If so, add them to your keyword list. If not, throw them into your negative list in order to avoid showing on them in the future.

I see people making these mistakes all the time and losing lots of money on PPC because of them. Don’t be one of them.

A Website Designer is a blog by Dan Norris a passionate small business Web design expert from the Gold Coast, Australia. Read this full post here 5 biggest beginner mistakes you can make in Adwords PPC

This post is really just an update on results. After 2 months we have gone from 32 (4th page) to number 1 in Google for the keyword Amber Teething Necklace.

In addition we have gone from 8th to 4th for amber beads (this has only been a few weeks of SEO for this term).

All of this starts to mean something when we look at traffic and revenue data.

4 figure increase in overall organic search engine traffic

Note this is the Christmas period so some increase would be attributed to additional Christmas traffic however consider whether or not they would have received any of this traffic if they had been on page 4 still.

Here is a chart showing the overall % change in organic search traffic (free traffic) from Google from before we started vs now.

In the chart above the blue line shows daily visits in the current month and the orange line shows daily visits in the month before we started.

As you can see, the total organic search traffic has gone up over 60%. I have blurred out the exact numbers but it’s a 4 figure increase in visitors.

Near 500% increase in traffic for 1 keyword

This chart is even more dramatic. It shows the increase in search engine traffic just for the keyword Amber Teething Necklace.

As you can see from this chart the blue line has shown huge advances over the original orange line to the point where the overall monthly increase in traffic is close to 500%!

This emphasises the value of chasing high traffic keywords, because you only need to dominate Google for 1 or 2 keywords in order to have a huge impact on your traffic.

Revenue increase of over 120% directly attributed to natural Google traffic

The most remarkable stat is their increase in revenue. Because their Google Analytics has been set up to track ecommerce revenue we can track the specific amount of money they have made this month compared with the previous month from people who have visited via Google’s natural listings.

Again I can’t specific the exact figures however I can say that their revenue from natural Google traffic (free traffic) has more than doubled (120% increase).

Of course some of this increase is natural given the Christmas period however the fact that their traffic has increased so much (500%) for one keyword that they were previously on the 4th page for, is enough evidence to suggest that they would not have had near the same increase without SEO. In fact to prove this I looked at the figures from the previ0us year where organic search revenue increased around 50% in the same period (as opposed to 120% this year).

This has all been achieved in 2 months of our basic $99 / month SEO program.

What do you think?

I am always harping on about the value of natural SEO. Consider how much it would cost you to get an increase of say 1,000 visitors using Adwords. Let’s estimate a low 50c per click (it can be 10x or 20x that for a competitive keyword), you are talking $500 every month to get this traffic increase.

With SEO you not only pay substantially less than this (our plans start at $99 / month) but you will get ongoing traffic for keywords you optimised for. A lot of the time we can move on from one keyword to the next and the old keyword will still consistently bring in free traffic month after month without any SEO work. We can then focus on the new keyword to bring even more traffic.

Some businesses can respond really well to SEO and Flower Child is a good case in point. I believe all small businesses should be speaking with an expert about SEO and seeing if they can re-produce some of these results.

I’d love your comments below on this let me know what you think.

A Website Designer is a blog by Dan Norris a passionate small business Web design expert from the Gold Coast, Australia. Read this full post here SEO case study month 2 – Number 1 in Google – revenue doubled

Blog networks work in much the same way. The site owner can write an article to post to the blog network and it will be posted to a number of blogs within the network.

Blog networks are basically a group of websites that are owned by the one person who allows people to publish articles to the sites usually for a membership fee. The blog network owner gets the constant stream of content keeping the site relevant in the eyes of Google and the member gets a link in the articles they submit.

In this article I’m going to go through the 4 networks I’ve tested and give you some basic information on each one. Note as usual there are no affiliate links in this article or anywhere on this blog as I’m not looking for products to promote - I’ll leave that to others.

A word of warning

Some people might see this as a bit of a grey-ish hat SEO technique. I would suggest that it’s really no different than guest blogging however I would also make sure you know what you are doing before you utilise blog networks like the ones mentioned here.

1 – Build My Rank (BMR)

BuildMyRank.com is one network that is talked about a lot at the moment with people getting some good results.

You pay per domain that you link to within your articles and the entry level plan is $59 for 5 domains per month.

BMR is quite strict with content so generally you would submit a fairly high quality article and one that hasn’t been submitted elsewhere even in spun form. This takes some extra work but networks with quality standards are a good option anyway because Google is getting better and better at judging onsite quality and the higher quality the more likely Google is to rate the site.

For more information check out this detailed Build My Rank Review.

2 – Authority Link Network (ALN)

Authority Link Network is blog network that you can access if you have some of your own blogs to add to the network.

Unlike most other networks including BMR, ALN is free but it’s comprised of blogs from all people within the network not just the owner of the network.

To join ALN you need to submit 2 of your own blogs (your blogs have to have a Google Page Rank of at least PR2) and set them up to allow ALN to post articles to your sites. Note make sure you know what you are doing when you do this, these blogs are going to have a hell of a lot of not so great quality content posted to them so never use a site that is in any way important to you.

From there you can use their interface to post articles to the network. It supports article spinning so if you have an article with Spin Syntax that you have used for other purposes you can re-use it in ALN as it will produce a slightly different version of the article and not be a duplicate.

3 – Article Ranks (AR)

Article Ranks is another public blog network similar to BMR.

The system supports article spinning like ALN above and has plans ranging upwards from $39 / month.

As a result the quality of the content in the blogs is not quite as high.

Note they do have a free plan but to submit to the network you have to buy credits which in my mind is not a free plan.

 4 – Free Traffic System (FTS)

Free Traffic System actually is free! It’s a public blog network similar to AR or BMR but of course being free means the quality isn’t as high.

It’s probably the most confusing out of all of the networks presented here to use but again you get what you (don’t) pay for.

There is also a paid plan that supports more blogs but the free plan gives you 50 blogs to choose from which is a nice start.

Summary

All of these networks can be useful and once you have the procedures setup for adding posts to the networks it can be pretty quick to add articles.

There are quite a lot of networks like this out there that enable you to post articles to their blogs. Linkvana is another one which is quite popular although considerably more expensive than those mentioned here. There are also private networks that you can find that provide the same service.

Have you had any experience with blog networks?

Let us know in the comments below.

A Website Designer is a blog by Dan Norris a passionate small business Web design expert from the Gold Coast, Australia. Read this full post here Using blog networks for SEO

Getting traffic to your website from Google is getting harder and harder. In the old days it was as simple as making the top 3 or 5 of the natural listings and you would be virtually guaranteed loads of traffic.

But over the last few years, Google itself has made it harder and harder to get traffic through the natural listings because they keep adding more stuff to the page!

In particular the prominence of Google Places listings has caused business owners (including yours truly) considerable stress in the last year or so.

In this 2 part article I’ll explain how to go about optimising for Google Places. In part 1 I am going to focus on Keywords because depending on your keyword you may or may not have to focus on optimising for Google Places.

Keyword choice

Part of the challenge with Google Places is it doesn’t always show up when you do a Google search. Not only does it show up on and off but it also shows up in different ways depending on the search.

Here are a few different ways I’ve seen Google displaying it’s front page results depending on the keyword chosen.

Search ‘Brisbane Wedding Videos’

Note for this search you can see 3 natural listings first and then it starts showing the Google Places listings. You can’t see it in this screenshot but it shows 7 places listings and then shows the rest of the remaining listings.

If you have picked this keyword it’s critical that you can get to the top 3 or you can rank well in the Places listings or else you’ll get very little traffic.

Search – ‘Website Design’

The image above shows the search for ‘website design’ and as you can see there are no Places results at all. Google (for now) has obviously (and for me thankfully) decided that this is not a local term.

Search – ‘Wedding Videos’

The above image shows a search for ‘wedding videos’ and as you can see below the ads it gets straight into the Places results. Even if you are ranking number 1 in the natural results for this keyword there will be a total of 10 links above yours (and 6 over on the right hand side).

Your Keyword Strategy

The above 3 examples are just some of the ways Google displays these listings, I’ve also seen cases where it shows the map on the right but not the Places listings on the left and I’m sure there are other ways. They have clear implications for SEO because a number 1 natural ranking for one keyword could mean thousands of visitors per month and a number 1 ranking for another very similar could mean very few visitors.

A Website Designer is a blog by Dan Norris a passionate small business Web design expert from the Gold Coast, Australia. Read this full post here Google Places Optimisation (part 1)