If you work in web design or web development, then you probably can’t help but snarl when saying “Internet Explorer”. You might also share our aversion to any IE-related applications such as Microsoft/Yahoo’s Bing search engine. We have largely ignored Bing in favour of Google, but we keep our minds open to anything that might affect SEO.
Just this month, Bing has released the ‘Phoenix’ update for its Webmaster Tools. The interface has been overhauled and optimised for usability. At first glance, it is definitely reminiscent of Google Analytics, but Bing’s interface is more straightforward. Data is much easier to access with fewer clicks required to get more in-depth information.
New (beta) features include the Link Explorer, which allows you to view the backlinks of any domain, and the SEO Analyzer/SEO Reports, which can perform an analysis of the on-page SEO of any page from one of your verified domains. The Link Explorer allows the checking of backlinks to a URL, with an option to check backlinks to any page on a domain.
The Bing Webmaster Tools also include a tool for doing keyword research with organic search results (results that exclude data from adCenter), as well as a built-in markup validator with results that display the page you validated as it appears in the browser with convenient annotations that contain deeper information you can access simply by hovering over certain data.
While these tools exist elsewhere on the internet – and many of them are available in Google Adwords or Google Analytics – it is very handy to have such tools integrated to an SEO suite. As a package, it’s very attractive. It was attractive enough for me to test it out with our site. Initially, because of a bug, I wasn’t able to view any data. At the time of posting this, however, the bug seems to be fixed and I can really see the value of using Bing Webmaster Tools.
The value of Bing-specific data.
Google dominates search; there’s no doubt about that. However, Internet Explorer is the default browser on any new computer running Windows. Since IE has integrated Bing as its search engine, Bing has a large automatic user-base made up of people who either don’t know the difference between – or don’t know how to change – browsers. However, Bing is nowhere close to Google in terms of their users.
Google has about 60-70% of the market share while Bing has roughly 20-30%. Is it worth doing two sets of keyword research when the keyword research I can do through Google is relevant to 60-70% of searchers rather than the 20-30% using Bing? If keyword research results from Bing are different from Google’s, should I simply ignore the data altogether?
The question on my mind is how relevant the data I’m getting from Bing really is. How similar Bing and Google were regarding how they rank and index pages? I found a great article on SEO moz detailing the commonalities between Google and Bing. To summarize their findings, Google and Bing are quite similar, with the two becoming increasingly more similar as time goes on (more likely a case of Bing become more like Google than the other way around).
I take the findings as confirmation that it’s not a waste of time to play with Bing’s Webmaster Tools, which makes me happy because I really like the simplicity of its interface and the depth of the data it provides. I wonder if we’ll see some changes from Google Analytics and Google Adwords in an attempt to provide a similar application that merges the two. Exciting!
Looking to drive more traffic to your website? We all are, aren’t we? Ever hear of Google Adwords? Most business owners have either heard of it or have even tried it out themselves. Google offers a free $100 coupon for first time business owners and even offers to help you setup the account. Sounds good, right? Business owners beware!
I have been setting up Google Adwords accounts for business owners for over 10 years and have learned from experience the best ways to optimize your Google Adwords account to get the most return on your ad spend. I charge all of my clients a fee to setup their Google Adwords accounts up because it’s takes time to setup the campaign correctly the first time. This saves our clients money in management fees in the long run. Management time is much easier and time effective.
Frequently clients hear about the Free $100 coupon for Google Adwords which includes a Google specialist assisting them on setting up their accounts for free. They often ask why I charge a setup fee when they can get Google to do it for them. Here is a little case study that we recently did to test Google’s free account setup.
CASE STUDY
A local Ranch in BC providing horseback trail rides to BC residents approached us to setup their Google Adwords account up. We contacted Google Adwords free account services to help with the setup. The Google specialist was very pleasant to deal with and set the whole campaign up for us in about 20 minutes. After the campaign was setup, this is what we found.
If we were to let the campaign go live the way that it had been setup by the Google Adwords specialist, my client would have been wasting their money, and the end result in their mind would be that, “Google Adwords does not work“.
WHAT WE DID
We modified the campaign to target local searchers using keywords that described the service being offered. We created multiple ad groups of unique keyword phrases so that we could target the ad copy to the search query. We sent traffic to the landing page describing the horseback trail rides. Within the first 2 days of the campaign that WE created going live, our client is already receiving requests for their services.
We are a fully certified Google Adwords agency and take the time to get to know our clients, the services that they provide, their target audience and their competition. We take pride in helping our clients grow their businesses and are only happy when our clients are happy.
If you are considering implementing a Google Adwords campaign, please contact us first for a free consultation so that we can help you save money in the long run and build your business with strategic internet advertising planning.
Lindsay Viscount, Owner / Creative Director
[email protected]
If you are all about visuals, Pinterest is the social media site to be on. It is a large social media platform that gathers everyone’s interests in one place. This is the perfect place to be if you want to know the current and up and coming trends. Their mission is to “connect everyone in the world through the ‘things’ they find interesting.”
Pinterest is beautifully organized by its pin-board/grid type layout which makes it visually stimulating.
Pinterest home page
It is easy to use and allows you to share your hobbies, interest, events and more. Pinterest provides you with a ‘pin it’ button to add to your bookmarks. This allows you to ‘pin’ any image, blog, or website directly onto Pinterest. You can also create different categories that suit your interests, plus you also have the option to share your ‘pins’ on Twitter or Facebook. Another cool and handy thing about Pinterest is that the images are a direct link to the original source.
Pin Board Categories
My experience with Pinterest has been more than awesome. I must say I’m pretty much addicted to it because I can find everything that I like on one site. What’s even better is that people are very active and supportive on Pinterest. My first ‘pin’ ended up getting more than 140 repins within less than an hour, 84 likes with more than 30 follows, in one day. I must say, it’s pretty liberating to see that people ‘repin,’ like and follow you because they also have the same interest.
Here are a few reason why you should use Pinterest?
So, I suggest you get yourself started with Pinterest, explore and connect with people who are interested in the same things as you. For businesses, I suggest you to experiment with different strategies that can drive in new customers or traffic to your website. Pinterest allows room for you to be creative with your branding approach. Until next time, Go and PIN your INTEREST.
Longevity Graphics has been building websites and implementing internet marketing strategies since 2002. Our competitive advantage is the experience that we bring to the table, the extensive knowledge of Google Webmaster standards, ranking factors, conversion optimization, and the personalized customer service that we provide to all of our clients; big and small.
When working with our clients on an internet marketing campaign, we utilize many different platforms to get the best results for the unique needs of the client. 3 platforms that we almost always recommend include:
Google Adwords is a pay-per-click option that allows our clients to drive immediate targeted traffic to their websites. We can control the placement of the ads (whether you come up first, second, third or on the side), the cost of the clicks and the daily/monthly budget and target the ads geographically. This is a great platform to start receiving great results when implemented correctly. If you have tried implementing a Google Adwords campaign and failed to see results that were bringing you a return on your investment, it is worth speaking to an expert who knows how to optimize your campaign.
Google Places is a great way to target geographical search queries interested in working with a business with a specific geographical region. The benefit to Google Places is it’s FREE, the listings out rank organic results and your customers can add reviews to your listing which can help to promote the benefits of dealing with your company.
In the example below, you can see that The Last Door is coming up for the search querie “Recovery Centre For Men New Westminster” within the Google Places section of the search results page which is out ranking the organic search results.
Google+ is an interesting new platform that we are urging our clients to take advantage of. Google is starting to display Google + profiles within the search results pages (seen below). Not a lot of companies have started using this platform for marketing and you can really get a jump up on your competitors by utilizing this platform.
In conclusion, when developing an internet marketing strategy don’t forget to utilize these great Google platforms to help boost your exposure. Gaining targeted traffic in all areas of the internet will help to develop your brand, increase your leads and at the end of the day you will see an increase in your return on investment
Pay-Per-Click/Google Adwords Landing Page Recommendations
When designing the landing pages for the pay-per-campaigns like Google Adwords or a Yahoo/Bing campaign it is good idea to start by designing 2 completely different designs (1 short page, 1 long page). You provide all of the most important information above the fold. (The fold is everything that is on screen without having to scroll.)
Important elements include:
Above the Fold:
Below the Fold:
Landing Page Testing
Once you have launched a pay-per-click campaign, it is a good idea to test certain aspects of the page to identify what your audience will respond best to in order to achieve the best conversion results. You can easily test different aspects of your landing page by implementing Google Website Optimizer. Here is what I recommend testing:
Building websites and landing pages for conversion optimization is something that I love to do and have developed skills in for many years. If you are creating a landing page and would like a second opinion on what you have developed, I am always happy to give you my opinion, so send me an email. [email protected]
Google Adwords audits are something that we do quite frequently. I run into tons of small businesses that setup their Google Adwords accounts on their own hoping to gain new business leads. The thing that I find most often, is that businesses that setup their own accounts usually make some common mistakes that can cost them big. Their budgets get eaten up and the leads that they receive are not very relevant. Something that I often hear is “Google Adwords doesn’t work!”
Well if you setup your account to target relevant traffic, Google Adwords can be a very cost effect way to increase your business leads and your ROAS (return on as spend). Here are some tips that will help you to improve your campaign.
Tip #1 – Campaign Setup
When setting up your campaigns, it is a good idea to break the campaigns up by geographical region and by the network that you choose to market your ads on. This will help you in the future to allocate more budget to the campaigns that are performing at a higher level, converting, and bringing you more of a return on your ad spend.
Tip #2 – Ad Group Setup
When setting up your ad groups, it is a good practice to setup many ad groups that will incorporate unique targeted keywords. This will allow you to develop targeted keyword rich ad content to display to your audience that is relevant to the search query. Implementing this strategy will increase your chances of a higher click-through-rate which will in turn increase your quality score giving you a better cost-per-click and higher placement than your competitors based on a usability experience.
Tip #3 – Keywords – Broad or Match
When selecting keyword match types for a PPC campaign, it is important to take into consideration many factors; fist and for most, conversion rate, cost-per-click, conversion rate and quality score. Adding broad matches will get you more volume but will cost you more per click. The quality score on the broad match keyword should be lower than an exact match on and hence cost-per-clicks should be higher. You can run a low cost-per-click, high click-through-rate campaign on exacts but your ads will only reach a small audience.
Recommendations for setting up the pay-per-click campaign are to use broad match for longtail keywords and test broad and match types for higher traffic keywords. Since longtail keywords are already very targeted they will receive less traffic and convert at a higher level. However, the higher traffic keywords need to be tested to determine which convert better and have a higher return on ad spend. Once return-on-ad-spend has been determined, we will select the best method for specific keywords.
Tip #4 – Longtail Keyword Strategy
Within the pay-per-click channel, best practice strategies indicate that using more descriptive longer search phrases (longtail) convert at a much higher rate and cost a lot less than broader terms. Using geographical terms matched with broader terms is a great way to create longtail keywords. This is a strategy that we will implement.
Tip #5 – Hire A Professional
If all of this sounds foreign to you, hire a professional to setup your account for you. We setup accounts for clients all the time, and once your account is setup right from the beginning, it’s takes very little time to manage it. If you have already setup your Google Adwords account, we can audit it for you as well.