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Tuesday, May 14
Twitter marketing

Along with Facebook and Google+, Twitter forms the “Big 3” of social media networks. Thus, Twitter marketing becomes a powerful tool for businesses and websites of all shapes and sizes – from the multi-national online retailer to the niche blog. It is certainly a must have for leveraging an online presence, visitors, brand recognition, and/or sales.

Taking advantage of Twitter requires some knowledge of best practices. Of course, knowing what not to do will help you determine a sound Twitter marketing strategy.

The following mistakes will kill your efforts(1)

  • You Don’t Have a Content Strategy
    Ignoring engaging content that can impact Twitter tops the list for Cournoyer. By placing great content on a blog and leveraging it with Twitter, companies can position themselves as a “thought leader in your field.” It’s a great way to drive visitors to your site.

  • You Tweet Too Often or Not Enough
    Find that right balance with tweets. While some mention twice a day as that “sweet spot,” Cournoyer likes the five to 10 tweets per day mark.

  • Your Tweets Are Too “Me-Focused”
    Talking about yourself too much will get you tuned out. Consider the 4-1-1 principle, which uses one tweet for your own content, another tweet that’s purely promotional, and four that share content from others around the Internet.

  • You Lack Staff Involvement
    Encourage your staff to, at the very least, share content and promote the brand with Twitter and other social networks. You can get your staff involved more with Twitter, putting a face to the business and improving the idea of positioning the company as thought leaders.

How can you better utilize the powerful marketing tool of Twitter?  Contact us to learn more effective strategies that can help your business.

(1) Source: Brendan Cournoyer

Thursday, January 12

 
Google’s algorithm changes over the past 2-3 years are making it harder to directly influence search engine rankings.  Factors such as the Google ‘trust’ factor (which gives preference to older domain names) are impossible to influence, leaving many businesses with sub-optimal organic rankings.

With many businesses being disgruntled with SEO results there is an ever-increasing trend (as Google had hoped) towards paying for search positions.

Yes, with pay-per-click advertising you need to continually spend to get a result.  However, these 7 key reasons may have you reconsidering your marketing mix to include pay-per-click advertising.



1. Paid Clicks are from Hungry Customers

Common sense suggests that people clicking organically are early in the buying cycle, whereas those clicking on paid ads are more ready to make a purchase.  Paid ads often contain special offers, discounts, pricing examples, and are directly targeted towards what the searcher is looking for.  E.g. see the compelling offers that appear when ‘carpet cleaning’ is searched on Google – '3 Rooms for $65', '10% off' etc. Compare this to the first 4 organic listings which have minimal marketing appeal.

 
 Click to Enlarge


2. Search Engines have Shareholders

Organic results are being bumped down the list in favour of paid ads, in an attempt to maintain share prices of the search engines.  Ads can now include a business location and links to other pages within the website (see examples below).  As a result, the paid ads are getting clicked on more than ever before because searchers don’t like having to scroll.


   
 Click to Enlarge  Click to Enlarge


3. Organic = Watching Grass Grow

It can be frustrating watching and waiting for your website to improve organically.  No one knows how high it will reach and how fast it will get there.

Pay-per-click advertising gives immediate visibility.  Ads can be shown to a searcher in a specific location for a specific keyword, within as little as 10 minutes.  This sure beats sitting around hoping/praying for your website to improve organically.



4. Pay-per-Click Covers 1,000’s of keywords

It is difficult to get a website ranking organically in the top 3 for 100’s of popular keywords without the website having literally hundreds or thousands of pages.  Many older websites will rank well under a select few popular keywords but they could be missing out on customers who search for variations of these keywords.  Pay-per-click lets you actively pursue all keyword variations, without having to write additional content!


5. Greater Control

The description used in organic search results will be the meta description of the relevant page, or in some instances, an extract of text from the page.  Whilst you can alter the meta description, it isn’t guaranteed that this will be displayed, and any changes that you make won’t be reflected until the search engine re-crawls your website (which could be hours or months – no one knows exactly). By comparison pay-per-click ads can be changed almost instantly and are reflected generally within 10 minutes online.


6. Make use of Landing Pages

1-page websites, also known as ‘Landing Pages’ or ‘Squeeze Pages’, are renowned for having higher conversion rates than full websites.  Landing pages work well for businesses whose customers are making a time-sensitive decision (e.g. pest control), the customer can get the same or a similar service elsewhere (e.g. mortgage broking), and credibility can be quickly conveyed in a few key bullet points.

1-Page websites generally don’t rank well organically in competitive areas due to the website having insufficient content.  However, pay-per-click advertising can have these pages ranking high in any keyword category, and driving quality targeted traffic that converts into leads.  It is not uncommon for a good landing page and pay-per-click campaign to convert 25% of visitors into leads.

These statistics are from a test comparing the conversion rate of a full website (SEO Landing Page) with a 1-Page PPC Landing page –


  Conversion Rate 
SEO Landing Page  15.1% 
PPC Landing Page 26.9%


7. You Control your Rankings

By bidding on keywords you can control your rankings with pay-per-click advertising.  Note however that your bid is only one of a number of factors search engines look at when determining how much you pay per click.  A good quality landing page with relevant keywords will help keep your click costs to a minimum.

This article provides greater insight into why you should consider running pay-per-click ads even if you are ranking well organically

Friday, October 07

The Truth about Google AdWords

AdWords is a phenomenal marketing tool if used correctly. Our clients have generated millions of dollars worth of sales and achieved a positive return on investment where their campaigns have been correctly architected and managed.

Google AdWords is designed in a way that encourages businesses to spend money using campaign settings they think are beneficial, but can actually be detrimental to the performance of a campaign.


A typical day in the life of an Australian small business owner...

So you’ve just received a Google AdWords voucher in the mail for $75 worth of free advertising credit – how exciting!

You login to Google’s website, setup your campaigns, enter your credit card and voucher details, then wait for the phone to ring.

But somehow nothing happens. This brilliant advertising service that everyone talks about just spent $75 of Google’s money with no result. 

Speculating, you spend a little more of your own money, tweak some keywords, re-write your ads, and then your receive a call from someone claiming to be looking at your website.

It must be working! You spend some more, this time increasing your bids because you notice your ads are too far down the list. Your cost of clicks increases and you’re now sitting in the top 3. The phone rings a little more!

A few days later you check your ads and you’re sitting 5th of the list for your #1 keyword – how dare your competitors outrank you! You then start to wonder if they’re clicking on you.

So you increase your bids a bit more but notice your ads are receiving less clicks, and you start wondering ifAdWords is all it’s cracked up to be.

Then...you read your credit card statement and nearly faint at the charges from Google!


Case Study – 82% of a budget wasted!

When we added the keyword ‘advertising perth’ to a trial campaign it triggered visits for keywords including ‘how to study advertising in perth’, ‘personals adverts perth’, ‘quokka advertising perth’, ‘transperth advertising’.Of the $162 spent in 7 days, $134 was spent on clicks that were totally irrelevant!

Click on the thumbnail below to see the full list –

This click wastage is prevalent in almost all AdWords campaigns and is a moving target.

This is only one of over 10 different ways Google encourages businesses to spend more on AdWords than they need to (last quarter they generated $9.03 billion in revenue from this service). It pays to have any AdWords campaign professionally managed to obtain the best possible result!


Are You Bronze, Silver or Gold?

If you are running Google AdWords or are considering launching a campaign to promote your business, PositionMEonline provides three levels of Google AdWords management to ensure your campaigns are run most effectively. 

Starting from $130+GST/month for the Bronze service we will review your campaigns every month and provide you with an update on your campaign performance. This small investment often pays for itself as a result of substantially reduced click wastage and a higher return on investment.


Find Out How Much You’re Wasting - FREE

If you have a Google AdWords account that is currently not managed by us and would like to know how much you have spent on unwanted clicks, we provide a complimentary campaign review and will reveal the finite dollar value of your wasted click costs. This offer is valid until 31 October 2011.


Not Running AdWords Yet?

You could be missing out on an excellent source of high quality traffic to your website. All new campaigns are created by PositionMEonline’s AdWords Qualified Consultants and are highly refined to ensure minimal click wastage.


Thursday, June 24

We're pleased to announce the launch of a new free guide for businesses looking for a web marketing service provider. 

Our industry is littered with one-man operations, fly-by-nights, and companies that give our industry a bad name.  This guide has been developed by our team to assist you in filtering out the wheat from the chaff.  Best of all it's 100% free, and could save you thousands in fees and lost business!

Click the icon below to download your free copy now!





Tuesday, March 02
For the past 2 years or so Google has been displaying map listings of businesses relevant to local search phrases.  For example a search for 'mechanic perth' will display a list of 10 mechanics in the Perth metropolitan area in the organic (i.e. the free) search results.

The Google Map section displays businesses that are listed with the Google Local Business Centre, a creation of Google's that makes it one of the most powerful local search tools available.

The benefits of listing a business in the Google Local Business Centre are considerable -

  • Search results can contain detailed information about your business, moreso than Yellow Pages, and it's free (click here to see the PositionMEonline listing for 'web design perth'
  • Searches conducted on iPhones and other mobile phones with internet browsing technology often display Google Map listings at the very top of the page (on small screens this prominant view makes clicking on the listings quite compelling)
  • Google often displays a Google Map in the organic search results when a searcher looks for a product or service by location - i.e. we have some clients who have obtained #1 rankings on Google within 24 hours!
  • Searchers using Google Earth have the ability to zoom into the local region and view businesses relevant to their topic of interest
Our client website statistics are showing that Google now has close to 90% market share in Australia.  Obtaining as much visibility on this major search engine is crucial in your online marketing strategy.  PositionMEonline can assist your business with listing on the Google Local Business Centre - call us on (08) 9313 2699 today to find out how.
Sunday, October 05
Being found high in Google’s search results is not a 5 minute job. You could pay to be listed instantly on the right hand side in the ‘sponsored links’, but this will cost you every time someone clicks on your advertisement.

The ‘organic’ search results on the left hand side of Google get clicked on around four times as much as the sponsored links. Positioning your website high in these search results takes time, but is essential for successfully generating business from the internet.

Google recently introduced a ‘trust’ factor – the older your website, the more trusted it becomes, and the higher its position. Brand new websites now have to wait 6-9 months to rank well for competitive keywords.

If you are thinking of starting a website to generate more business, get started today.  Even if we put together a simple website, this will start the Google clock ticking, and help you to be found online sooner.

Call us to get your foot in the door with Google today!
Thursday, September 25
The wording of your website is crucial. Not just for your visitors, but to help you to be found on Google. Knowing the right keywords to incorporate in your text can make the difference between being flooded with website enquiries, and waiting for the phone to ring.

A keyword is a phrase that a potential customer might search for to find your business. For example – ‘mortgage broker perth’, ‘holiday house cottesloe’, or ‘fishing charter broome’.

Bad examples of keywords include – ‘finance’, ‘tourism’, ‘shares’, or ‘online’. 51% of searchers use either 2 or 3 words to describe what they are looking for. Only 18% of searchers use one word.

Knowing your online market by understanding how people search is crucial to being successful online. Put yourself in your customer’s shoes and think laterally, then ensure you include these precise keywords in your website content.

We provide a Keyword Research service to assist you with defining the best keywords to use on your website, sourced from databases that tell us precisely how people search online.







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