It’s highly accessible and tempting for anyone to create a Google AdWords account and start spending some money on pay per click search engine advertising.  Unfortunately this easy access doesn’t translate to an ease in getting results.

The Details Matter
A successful Google AdWords campaign involves the right research, configuration and tracking to get you anywhere near the perceived pot of gold at the end of this rainbow.

When done right, pay per click marketing produces a marketing formula of sorts, a map of numbers that lets you evaluate the investment it takes to land a conversion.  Depending on your business and website, this conversion might be an e-commerce sale, a specific download, visitors to a specific page or just getting users to your website.

While this post is just an overview, the following main items are key to a solid AdWords PPC campaign:

1. Research – You must understand your audience, the keyword terms they will be searching for.

2. Configuration – The correct set-up of an AdWords account, campaigns, settings, budgets and tracking tools are all key elements.

3. Copywriting – What your ad says matters! In many cases you will want to test different ads and text to see what performs best.

4. Landing Pages – The most overlooked item is landing pages. You need to understand that when a user clicks an ad, you have this small window to convert them. Sending your ad link to your home page is not going to cut it, take them right to the conversion point and make it easy for them to buy, download or contact you.

5. Evaluation – The ability to track and review data is one of PPC’s biggest assets. Having Google Analytics and your AdWords configured correctly to track each movement is a must. Without it, your flying blind.

6. Adjustments – The best campaigns are reviewed and assessed weekly and even daily. Just setting it up and letting it run is a bad idea.  You want evaluate and make decsions on the right adjustments to find your strongest results.

We hope this quick overview is helpful.  If you have been wanting to explore Google AdWords or have tried it the wrong way in the past, Five Technology is here to help you with the right strategy to get results.  Give us a holler!

It’s no secret that businesses have a lot of questions and misconceptions on how to have  higher search engine rankings for their website.  Search engine optimization for many is confusing and often even overwhelming.

With all of the complexity in SEO, we offer this simple question to help clients get a better grasp.

Is Your Website Worth Being Found?

Does your website answer questions?  Does your website provide service or process examples?  Does your content educate or provide insight? Does your website offer tips? Is your content well structured and linked?

The fact that you want more leads, does not make your website a good resource for others.  Rankings are not determined on how badly you want visitors and new business opportunities.

View search rankings as an evaluation of your website as a resource, a trusted resource.  If your website isn’t a resource for people searching Google, Yahoo or Bing for answers or information, then you won’t rank well.

3 Tips To Become A Resource Online & Improve Search Rankings

1. Be clear with your content on what you offer.  Stay away from marketing speak and deliver the concise message of what you offer/do.  Simple beats sexy … “We are a trusted Minneapolis air conditioning service and repair company.”

2. Develop better content ideas than “About Us”, “Products” and “Services”.  If you have a process, outline it.  If you have satisfied clients and experience, put together case studies.  Build a list of “10 things to know before selecting your car insurance provider”.  The more you help a website visitor, the more trust you create.

3. Web content that is easy to understand and valuable attracts links from other websites.  Links act as votes of trust for your website.  Getting back to #2, do you think your “About Us” page is worth linking to?

So the next time you head to Google to find an article on SEO tips, consider changing your approach.  Give some thought to how valuable of a resource your website is and what you can do to improve it.

I was very fortunate to get to speak at the Buffalo, MN Chamber of Commerce Quarterly Luncheon today.  I presented on some ideas to help a small business website succeed, search engine optimization (SEO) and web analytics. I think I only put one person to sleep and the group had a lot of great Internet marketing questions in the follow-up.

There were some great Buffalo and Wright County businesses / organizations in attendance and I enjoyed the 45 minute presentation. Getting to share my knowledge and passion for the web is one of the best things I get to do at Five. Thank you to the Chamber for the invite to speak and present!

Speaking of presentations, we will be announcing a business blogging seminar soon for late May.  We should be getting the details out next week.

Thanks to Five web programmer @travisneids for taking the photos.

Our last post looked at the new Google search features incorporating local search results into regular search queries.  For many search terms you no longer need to apply a city and state to get local results.

A New Top Keyword
I thought I would update that post with how this new Google search feature has effected our search engine traffic.  Prior to this local feature, our top terms of referral traffic were our company name and then “web design MN”, “Minnesota web design” and other variations.

In the past week we have a new top term for bringing traffic to our website, “web design”.  Prior to the Google change, we would have never even dreamt of competing for the term of web design without a location or another term attached. In doing just some minor research, we appear in the local search results for 11 different zip codes.  With our office being rurally located, we bleed into other areas results from as far as 20 miles away.  If we were right in Minneapolis this wouldn’t be the case, but the search volume for “web design” would be much higher.  Not too bad of a trade off.

This new local search feature creates a lot of opportunity for small businesses to attract more buisness from Google.  It also shines a much brighter light on local search, a focus we will see increase in the coming months for sure.

Google is looking to help users find more local information by placing local search results in non-local search queries.

Instead of having to search “Dentists in Delano, MN”, you can just type “Dentists” and get local results on page one. Google is using the location of your Internet provider (ISP) to determine where you are, so there will be some variables and inaccurate results, but local search results are there.  Google is trying to improve your search results, feeling that your search probably has local intent.

Local search blogger Paul Jahn weighed in on the new local search feature and the change location ability.  Having an ISP that is local is one hurdle, but Paul points out the “change location” feature to help correct that.  As my example above shows, my results are for Maple Plain which is 10 miles from where we actually office in Delano.  There are still a few Delano results though.

Matt McGee also put together a great post over at Search Engine Land on this and gave some examples, the positives and the challenges.

Local Search Is Important & Improving
The biggest takeaway here is that local search is getting easier for the user.  Google is working to understand what you want.  It is also going to become even more important for the small business to make sure they are represented in the Google 10 pack of local results.

Small business now have the chance to compete for popular one keyword or two keyword searches.  This opportunity shouldn’t be ignored.  This addition is great on many levels and I’m sure we’ll be posting on it more in the coming months.