We’ve been working with Complete Driveway Designs – a Bury based pattern imprinted concrete driveway company – for a couple of years now. And in that time our services have had a definite, measurable impact on the effectiveness of their web presence; thanks to our Web Analytics supported SEO and PPC work, they’re now getting conversions and qualified leads for approximately 10% of what they were paying before we got involved.

In the time we’ve been working for Complete Driveway Designs, we’ve built up an excellent understanding of their work, their business, and their goals. This is something we do with every one of our clients; it’s the only way to achieve sustainable results.

The longer we’ve worked with Complete Driveway Designs, the more we’ve come to identify with the skills they use when they’re installing pattern imprinted concrete driveways. Like, for example:

• A professional attention to detail.
• An excellent understanding of the capabilities of different specialised tools.
• An appreciation of client’s needs.
• A willingness to put the effort in.
• Pride in the end result.

Despite the differences in the services we offer, at a core level we’re very similar.

We’d be interested to hear what values other agencies and freelancers feel they share with their clients: leave a comment and let us know.

People who’ve already viewed your website are more likely to be amenable to further advertising; Google is helping Google users see relevant ads, and is helping adwords users advertise more effectively. Google have this to say about it:

“Remarketing is a tool that can drive ROI for all types of advertisers, regardless of the focus of your campaigns (brand-orientated, performance-driven, etc.) or your ad formats.”

We can definitely see how content network remarketing could offer a greater degree of focus – and creativity – within ad creation. Users who visit pages on your websites will be added to a Google generated adwords list related to that page; ads will go only to the people on these lists. So you can focus on ads related to the content they’ve viewed – perhaps with small-scale special offers aimed only at people on that list.

All of this occurs within the traditional Google ad-auction set up, with CPM and CPC values optimisable through other targeting techniques – geographical, for example. So, Google is presenting adwords user with the opportunity to target people who’re further on in the buying cycle than other search users, and to further finesse the selection of users who see their ads. It’s the latest step in Google’s journey towards increasingly user-defined marketing platform functions; other functions are currently in beta, and we’ll be discussing them further as they appear.

Broad Match Modified keywords fit snugly between Broad and Phrase searches, and should offer a combination of Broad search volume with Phrase search control and manageability. Google are pushing it at PPC users who normally focus on exact and phrase match keywords, as it offers greater possible exposure. The reverse is also true, with Google advising that PPC users who tend to concentrate on broad search results may see a preliminary reduction in click-through and conversion rates. Ideally, of course, the increased relevance of ads with the broad match modifier should help to bring these back up.

Google have, as usual, published some excellent supporting literature for this new feature. Two very  important practical points for those of you who want to implement the Broad match modifier:

• Don’t put a space between the “+” and the keyword.
• Do put a space between the keywords.

Unless your website is already well established within the search engines and you are able to rapidly alter content to achieve listings in the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) for phrases relating to your products / Christmas season what can you do?

By far the easiest way for companies operating on the web to achieve their goal of higher visitor numbers at Christmas is through utilising Pay Per Click networks, such as Google AdWords, Yahoo Search Marketing and Live / msn adCenter. However this does have drawbacks, as a Pay Per Click Management company we are continually monitoring campaign budgets and spend efficiency, during the months leading up to Christmas and the new year sales you can expect your average Cost Per Click and if you want to maintain / increase visitor levels your daily budgets to increase.

During these periods of intense ad fluctuation where your competitors will be frequently modifying ads it is important that you also utilise Pay Per Click management to ensure your business is not adversely affected as others ‘cash in’ on the Christmas rush. View more information on Pay Per Click Management.

Website analytics is the process monitoring and interpreting the interaction with users with a website. Analytics can track every movement a user makes on page and where they come from. This is crucial in PPC Management as knowing what people clicked on and what they did on the site will allow you to make informative decisions on how to bid on particular key phrases.

Analytics is the beginning of a PPC Management, taking the information from the analytics it is possible to make usability decisions on the website. This may include removing bottle necks in the purchase funnel or reducing the bounce rate on landing pages.

Monitoring analytics with your PPC campaign can make the difference to those clicks that not provide a return. Taking the data and turning it into information that can be used to make decision about your website to increase conversion rates and ROI is how you can manage your PPC campaign the best.

When it comes to managing a PPC campaign there are a number of important tasks which are crucial to ensure that your campaign is earning the best ROI possible. Monitoring a PPC campaign using basic analytics will provide you with details for your campaign but collecting the right data and feeding back into the campaign is the most important role.

Website analytics is the process monitoring and interpreting the interaction with users with a website. Analytics can track every movement a user makes on page and where they come from. This is crucial in PPC Management as knowing what people clicked on and what they did on the site will allow you to make informative decisions on how to bid on particular key phrases.

Analytics is the beginning of a PPC Management, taking the information from the analytics it is possible to make usability decisions on the website. This may include removing bottle necks in the purchase funnel or reducing the bounce rate on landing pages.

Monitoring analytics with your PPC campaign can make the difference to those clicks that not provide a return. Taking the data and turning it into information that can be used to make decision about your website to increase conversion rates and ROI is how you can manage your PPC campaign the best.

“The key change to the formula will be how we consider price. Today’s formula considers an ad’s Quality Score and actual cost-per-click (CPC). The improved formula will still heavily weight Quality Score, but instead of actual CPC, it will consider an ad’s maximum CPC.”

So what does that actually mean for your AdWords campaign? How are the positions of your AdWords listings going to change? Contact one of our Pay Per Click management consultants to discuss your campaign and ensure you do not lose traffic and more importantly, sales.

If you currently manage or use an agency such as ourselves to manage a Google AdWords account utilising the new Google Print Ads service will be really quite simple in that it will reduce the time and labour associated to organising and implementing a conventional media marketing campaign.

“Google this week announced through the official AdWords blog a new advertising payment model, Pay Per Action or PPA. Pay Per Action is aimed at websites that have a goal in mind when targeting visitors, these goals for instance could be a purchase, an enquiry or any other site specific action. This is due to the pricing model of Pay Per Action; quite simply you only pay when the visitor reaches your goal or action.”

Last week Google went global with the beta, to be eligible to utilise the beta test you must currently utilise the Google AdWords conversion tracking and your campaign must have received more than 500 conversions in the last 30 days. If eligible you will be automatically alerted within your AdWords account.

For more news and information on Pay Per Action (PPA) please visit the Google PPA help centre.

The morning seminar and network session provided a good simple introduction to SEO and PPC to an audience of eighty business owners who all understood the importance of online marketing but few have the time or the knowledge to setup or manage such online marketing campaigns.

Although the event was informative there was only so much information that people could take onboard and little emphasis during the event was put on website analytics, the most crucial aspect of your online marketing campaigns. Before investing in and implementing any form of online marketing you must be sure that the campaign will provide an acceptable level of return in order to justify the initial spend.

Achieving better natural results from search engine queries takes time. A website’s structure and content must be optimised and the exposure must be increased. Pay Per Click (PPC) is a effective way of getting quick results were as using Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) can take more time but once established can return long term results. Thinking ahead and planning a medium to long term marketing strategy can increase revenue and allow your site to develop and maintain a competitive advantage over competitors’ websites.

Identifying when busy periods occur for your business and optimising your web page accordingly can reinforce existing sales strengths just as targeted seasonal advertising can help boost revenue over a longer period to benefit your business.

Successful search engine optimisation (SEO) should not be used like Christmas tree lights and only considered for the few weeks around Christmas but should be developed continually throughout the year.